I’ve noticed that psychedelic medicine has been on the rise in California and other parts of the U.S. over the last few years, and have heard reports from a handful of friends and acquaintances about the incredible results they’ve had from ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin. 

In our new home of Valle de Bravo, Mexico, I’ve also been surprised how psychedelics are just a normal part of everyday life. They’re something you talk about at kids’ birthday parties or with other parents in the pickup line at school. 

I don’t know if it’s the ancient heritage these plants have in Mexico (with evidence of their use dating back to 14,000 B.C.) or the hippie vibe of this particular town (it was the site of the Festival de Avándaro in 1971, the Mexican equivalent of Woodstock), or a combination of both.

Besides San Francisco, I’ve never encountered any other environment where psychedelics and other healing modalities are not only spoken of so freely, but are really “no big deal.”

That created the perfect setting for me to explore it for myself.

Micro-dosing

I decided to start my exploration of “magic mushrooms” with micro-dosing, which is typically defined as 5-10% of a standard psychoactive dose. For psilocybin, this means between 0.1 and 0.3 grams (100 to 300 mg) of dried Psilocybe cubensis.

According to this comprehensive guide:

“The intention [of micro-dosing] is to achieve subtle enhancements in mood, creativity, focus, and emotional resilience while maintaining the ability to engage in normal daily activities like work and socializing.”

I found a local cafe in Valle that openly sells branded psilocybin-infused chocolate bars, and I picked one up for my experiments.

I trusted the product because it’s made in-house by a local business owner known to the community, is nicely branded and packaged (suggesting there was at least a little quality control), and multiple people I trust have taken it and vouched for it.

It was a standard-sized, 100-gram bar containing 5% “functional mushrooms.” With 20 squares, that comes out to about 0.25 grams of mushrooms per square. Standard psilocybin content averages 1%, so there was probably around 0.0025 grams (or 2.5 milligrams) of psychoactive compounds per square.

I had never tried mushrooms before, nor micro-dosed anything, and therefore decided to start small: I took 1 square at 10 am on a weekday, about an hour before a Zoom workshop I was scheduled to teach for our Second Brain Membership.

These virtual workshops, which I do monthly, are typically quite challenging for me, since I have to keep a lot of material in mind and communicate it compellingly, while also taking into account the time left, people’s needs and questions, activity in the chat, the broader goals of the membership, etc.

It requires a lot of parallel processing and mixing different kinds of thinking, as well as keeping the objective in mind while remaining highly adaptable, which I often find difficult. I wanted to see if this chocolate could help me handle it with more ease.

Within about 15 minutes, I started noticing the effects, which were similar in magnitude to about 1-2 alcoholic drinks for me, i.e., a feel-good warmth without the negative side effects of heavy drinking.

The recurring pain in the right side of my throat that has plagued me for almost 20 years was already feeling relieved at this point. A line of tension down the right side of my neck (probably corresponding to my vagus nerve) felt soothed and even kind of buzzing with energy.

I started feeling a tingling, “glowing” sensation throughout my shoulders, neck, throat, and lower part of my head, as well as relief from a daily headache I’d had for weeks since recovering from a bad flu, which makes me think there were some pain-relieving effects.

As the workshop started, I felt noticeably more emotionally fluid, open, joyous, playful, and expressive, in place of the usual low-level anxiety I feel on group calls.

My wife Lauren, overhearing me from the other room, later said I sounded “really into myself,” which is a great description! I felt like the hot girl at a crowded bar, if that makes sense, open to and inviting attention from others, which is unusual for me.

During the call, I noticed I had a much easier time navigating the tension between sticking to a pre-formulated plan and adapting to changing circumstances. This was mostly because I more or less abandoned the plan – we only covered 1/3 of the agenda – which was a good thing because it was more important to discuss and integrate the material than plow ahead with all my slides, which is my usual tendency.

I felt much more attuned to the people on the call, warmer, more aware of their signals and body language, more curious about them, more interested in and welcoming of their questions and comments (which I can sometimes interpret defensively as veiled criticism, I’ve noticed).

We ended the last 15 minutes of the call with a very deep and personal discussion of what it means to be responsible adults and to conform to external expectations in the real world, without abandoning our interests, passions, aliveness, and sense of self.

That question was only loosely related to the technique I had introduced, but took a turn toward a more meaningful discussion than it would have otherwise.

Right after the Zoom call, I turned my attention to assembling a wooden playground structure for my kids, which I’d been doing the last few days in the afternoons after work. 

Surprisingly, this was extremely challenging! It was comically difficult for me to hold in mind obscure part numbers, search for them, count the numbers of screws and washers we needed for the next step, etc., a kind of task I normally find very easy.

I could tell my working memory was hampered – I repeatedly failed to hold in mind a 4-digit part number for more than a minute and had to keep starting over! I also handed my friend the wrong parts or the wrong number of parts. I don’t recommend doing construction on psilocybin, as studies have shown that it can hamper complex working memory.

I also found, both during my Zoom call and the subsequent construction task, that I cared much less and had much less fluency with anything numerical, abstract, technical, or conceptual, which normally feels like my “home territory.”

Instead, I felt drawn to nature, things physical and concrete, and thinking about my friends, family, and people I love. 

About 4.5 to 5 hours later, the effects had mostly subsided, and I was left with a pleasant afterglow like the morning after a fun party with friends (though my headache returned). I then left home to pick up the kids from school, and when my son got into the car, I felt a strong sense of spontaneous joy and almost broke into tears. I felt very connected to him and his innocence in that moment and throughout the afternoon.

For the rest of the day, I felt much more patient with the kids than usual. Normally, afternoons feel like they’re passing too slowly. I can find myself bored in comparison to the exciting pace of my workday. 

Next, I took the kids grocery shopping. I expected this task to be challenging, since it involves finding all the items on a list, but by this point, the cognitive effects had worn off and my working memory had returned. 

I felt more spontaneous, with my inner critic dormant and not filtering my words as much. This could also be described as “impulsive,” though, and my wife said I was “on one” all afternoon, and more blunt with her than usual.

In the evening, we went back to school for an all-school meeting, which took place in a forest next to the school. These all-school meetings are usually a bit stressful for me, with a flurry of faces and names I can’t quite remember, and all in Spanish. I felt noticeably calmer and more at ease this time, and about 50% warmer toward others (which made me about average for Mexicans!)

I had vivid dreams all night, one after the other, all warm and fuzzy and related to people I cared about. Besides the potential rudeness to my wife, the only downside I noticed was feeling thirsty. I had little appetite and didn’t eat much all day.

My conclusion from this first experiment was that this was a wonderful, enlightening, moving experience overall, and I definitely wanted to try it again. Micro-dosing felt very promising as an ongoing practice, as I seemed to be able to gain many mindset-altering benefits while still going about my day.

Overall, it strongly biased my mind and emotions away from abstract concepts and toward people, nature, my body, feelings, intuition, and my physical surroundings. Those are ways of being that I normally find hard to access, so this is extremely useful!

I did around half a dozen micro-doses, spaced out around once per week, as an initial foray into the world of magic mushrooms, and deeply appreciated their ability to shift me into a more grounded, calm, joyful, and connective state of being.

Macro-dosing

For the second phase of my experiment, I decided to go deeper with mushrooms and take a “macro-dose” (typically defined as approximately 2–3 grams, equal to roughly 25 mg purified psilocybin) under the supervision of an experienced professional. 

I recently met another father at our kids’ school who is a psychotherapist and administered psilocybin and MDMA-assisted therapy sessions on the outskirts of our town. We had a lot of mutual friends, and after getting to know him at a local sauna, I decided to work with him.

The process was surprisingly pedestrian: a Calendly booking link to schedule my session, plus a preparation call a few days beforehand, and a post-integration call a few days after. On our prep call, he asked me about my childhood history, my past experience with psychedelics and other mind-altering substances, my work and family situation, and any risk factors like mental disorders or addictive tendencies. He gave me guidelines such as not eating meat or drinking alcohol in the week leading up to our session, and asked me to water fast on the day of.

Most of all, we talked about my intentions for the sessions – what I wanted to see, hear, learn, and discover about myself. 

The intention I settled on was to explore my relationship with my father and how that affected my relationship with my son. My son and I had been going through what felt like a period of conflict and friction lately, as he explored his willfulness and the limits of parental boundaries. I’d felt distant from him, like an authority figure enforcing the rules rather than a friend going on a journey, and wanted to get to the root of the anger and frustration I’d felt toward him as he provoked his sister or made messes at the dinner table.

In previous psychedelic experiences, my father and my son had been at the forefront of my mind the entire time, and in retrospect, I can see that I just sort of assumed that would be the case again. Much of my personal growth journey has been about healing my past with my father, and I realize I had almost resigned myself to continuing to do so indefinitely. But plant medicine has intentions of its own, and I would find that not to be the case.

Set and setting

On the day of my scheduled session, I had a slow morning and, around 9 am, hailed a taxi to the therapist’s house, about 20 minutes away. His home was in a heavily forested area outside town, surrounded by nature, with a small office on the corner of his property seemingly purpose-built for these sessions.

It was a single room with an attached bathroom, decorated with all kinds of spiritual paraphernalia – incense, altars, totems, crystals, and images of Eastern spirituality. A large pullout sofa bed with a thick comforter occupied the center of the room, with a desk in one corner and two chairs facing each other in the other.

I took off my shoes and silenced my phone, and had a seat in one of the chairs. We spoke for about 15 minutes, revisiting my intention for the day and covering what I should expect over the coming hours. There was relatively little orientation needed: I would drink a small cup of dried mushrooms dissolved in water, with some lemon added to counter the bitterness, put on an eye covering, and lie in the bed under the covers for about 3-4 hours, to see what the mushrooms had to teach me.

I drank the liquid, which amounted to 4.3 grams of dried mushrooms (which at a 1.5% concentration meant about 40 milligrams of the active ingredient), and we talked for another 10 minutes, waiting for the medicine to start taking its effect. I started to feel its effects after about 15 minutes, and at that point went to the bathroom and then took my place under the covers. The therapist would stay with me throughout the entire 4-hour experience, making sure I was okay and supplying tissues and water as needed.

The first effects were visual – colorful tendrils of light swirling in the air above me. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was how mushrooms saw the world. After about 20 minutes of this, I went to the bathroom again, as the mushrooms had an effect on my bowels similar to coffee. 

Wrestling with an inner force

As I settled back into the bed, the experience shifted abruptly as a rising tide of discomfort quickly overtook me. It was a mix of nausea, muscle aches, and a kind of mental discomfort as thoughts and feelings I typically avoid rushed to the surface.

The next hour was physically intense for me – I writhed in the bed, flailing side to side, clutching my shirt and the bedspread, as the nausea got stronger and stronger. I broke out into a sweat, moaned and groaned and whimpered and snarled and breathed loudly in and out. It felt like I was wrestling with a powerful adversary, but that adversary was inside me, struggling to get out as I struggled to keep it in.

Throughout this part, many images flashed vividly through my mind, but I was surprised to find that they were mostly related to my daughter Delia. I saw her anguished face as she cried over a fight with her brother, and felt her kicking legs and pushing arms as she fought being put to bed. Suddenly, I was in her place, lying in her crib, crying and thrashing against the insurmountable force of my parent. I saw and felt it all viscerally from her perspective.

Eventually, I could sense the nausea was rising to a crescendo, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I felt the irresistible urge to yell, and gripping the sheets with my fists, I let out a couple blood-curdling roars at the top of my lungs, and could feel something moving through me and leaving me, like an exorcism. 

I could tell it was something related to my daughter, but I can’t say exactly what. As I lay on the bed, my legs propped up in exactly the birthing position, it was almost like I needed to “give birth” to her at a metaphorical or consciousness level, in the same way my wife had given birth to her physically. At 2 years old, her personality and will have emerged in full force, and it was as if I had to change my attitude and relationship to her from that of a helpless baby, requiring mostly feeding and changing, to a full-fledged person whose voice and opinions deserve an equal place in our family.

I told the therapist that I needed to throw up, and he brought a small bucket to the bedside so I could do so. Later, he told me that vomiting was uncommon, but not unheard of, during these sessions – happening with maybe one in every 30 people. As with ayahuasca, fighting the nausea and trying to keep the medicine down, I believe, was therapeutic. It provided a physical metaphor for the internal struggle, and the physical act of vomiting functioned as a symbolic act of expunging or releasing a force, entity, or energy that had been repressed inside.

The experience from that point onward was much calmer and more sublime. With my stomach empty but the psychoactive compounds fully absorbed into my bloodstream, I was free to go on an inner voyage. The music being played took center stage, a mix of soft contemplative instrumental tracks and adventurous, rousing anthems that sounded like a Hollywood epic.

Witnessing the women in my life

I found that, in contrast to my stated intention, my voyage was mostly about the women in my family. I thought of my mother, her intense love for me piercing my heart like it hadn’t in years. I felt the grief of her recent breast cancer recurrence, the helplessness I felt toward it, and how sorry I was to not be able to help her during this time, after all the years she dropped everything to care for me.

I thought of my wife Lauren and witnessed her essence as a divine, transcendent being that I was privileged to be with. The most clear message I received the whole time was that she was “the universe’s gift to me.” That she represents the universe’s most sincere act of pure generosity, I could never deserve nor repay. I felt the grief and sadness of all the times I didn’t treat her that way, neglecting to give her the attention, care, and respect her divine nature deserved.

I felt the deep sadness of not always treating my kids as the gifts they are. Of the times I’ve treated them as obligations, as hurdles to get past on the way to what I want. All of their emotions I hadn’t fully allowed – their rage, frustration, complaints, pride, annoyance, neediness, jealousy – came rushing up toward me from the pit where they’d been festering, unseen and unloved. It was hard to bear, the full weight of all that emotion. Like a white hot flash flood rushing past and through me on all sides. 

And again I thought of and felt my daughter – her emerging emotions of anger and sadness, her strong will and stubbornness, her vibrant personality, and the unique role she was starting to play in our family as peacemaker, caretaker, and comedian. It’s hard to explain, but each of these memories, realizations, ideas, and stories weren’t so much “thought” as “felt,” as if they were striking deep into the soft places of my heart. I cried more or less continuously, the tears completely soaking my eye mask and pillow. 

What was interesting about this part of the experience is that it was relatively free of “stories.” My daughter is so young, and our relationship so simple and pure, that I didn’t really have strong narratives about her that I had to let go of. The process was mostly somatic, like my body just needed to let go and process something I couldn’t fully explain, and both the logical explanations and the accompanying emotions took a backseat.

Holding this lineage of women in my mind, I was overwhelmed with the awareness of how much love they had poured into me my entire life. All the care, the thoughtfulness, the sacrifice. I felt the full weight of that care and how it had shaped me into the person I am now, capable of caring for so many others in turn. I saw how crucial, how all-important that warmth and love were to who I was; so much more important than the intellect with which I normally identify.

Tangentially, I also saw how important that direct, human caregiving is going to be in the new AI-driven era we’re entering. How important it’s going to be that we see each other, know each other, look out for each other, and help each other through the torrent of change we’re all facing as AI reshapes society. 

I saw that I could play a role not only in the intellectual, analytical, process-driven implementation of AI, but just as much in the education, the personal growth, and the human compassion that will need to accompany it. I had such a clear vision of the community we could create to help people grapple with the immensity of what AI would mean for them, and provide that human care and warmth that we all need to welcome the future with openness and curiosity.

The neuroscience of psychedelics

My psychedelic experience proceeded in stages or waves. They were almost like mini-trances, or a succession of dreams, as my mind flowed from one scene or sequence to the next. 

I found that I could choose when I wanted to “switch” from one line of thinking and feeling to another, almost like switching the channel on the TV. All I had to do was turn my head from one direction to another, and all of a sudden, my focus shifted. This was the first time I felt I had some control over the direction of my experience – I could choose where I wanted to go, what I wanted to focus on. And any person, relationship, memory, or part of life I focused on would yield insights.

I was reminded of this pair of images I came across in Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, showing the connectivity of the human brain in a normal state, compared to the hyperconnectivity of a psilocybin-induced state (based on this study):

The researchers found that: “This supports our idea that psilocybin disrupts the normal organization of the brain with the emergence of strong, topologically long-range functional connections that are not present in a normal state.” In other words, psilocybin temporarily allows distant parts of the brain that don’t normally communicate to talk to each other.

Psilocybin effectively “shakes up” the brain’s modular structure, temporarily breaking down entrenched communication patterns (i.e., the Default Mode Network) and thereby promoting mental flexibility and new associations.

I also know that psychedelics have the effect of “turning down” the activity in the pre-frontal cortex – the site of our high-order reasoning, as well as our inner critic and self-manager. I conceived of the experience as the authoritarian father figure (the pre-frontal cortex) stepping out of the room for a while, and the rest of the family coming together for a meeting in which they could talk to each other freely, share their experiences, and remember their love for each other.

The value in seeing through others’ eyes

One of my favorite aspects of the experience was the ability to see the world from anyone’s perspective. I saw the world from my wife’s perspective, and instantly all her words, actions, and decisions made perfect sense. I saw it from each of my children’s perspectives, and their pure innocence was so clear and palpable, even in the midst of their worst tantrums and “misbehavior.”

I think as a parent, one of the most important things to keep in mind is your children’s essential innocence. They, like you, are just a sweet, innocent being who was dropped into this chaotic, painful world without their knowledge or consent. They, like you, are just trying every day to survive, to get their needs met, to make sense of the information flooding their senses, and to find their agency and power in an unforgiving environment. 

That remembrance of their innocence is the key to everything – to treating them with compassion no matter how flagrant their behavior seems, to seeing every moment as an opportunity for love and connection, to teaching them with patience how to navigate life, to not taking their actions personally or making it about you. Yet it’s hard to see the innocence of your children when you’re not connected to your own innocence and inherent goodness. That awareness is what I was overwhelmed by once I could see life from their point of view.

I thought of other people as well. My uncle Gary, who passed away a few months ago, and I hadn’t been able to grieve. Somehow, the Spanish language we’d been using throughout the session helped me to feel it. I wept with the phrase “Mi tío, mi tio” echoing through my head, as all the memories of his generosity and humor filled my memory.

Finally, my attention turned to my father, and what I encountered there was so surprising: nothing but an overwhelming, profoundly deep sense of gratitude. I could see the world from his perspective, too, and what I instantly grasped was how hard it had been for him. How much he had had to endure as a father of four, what it had taken to maintain a marriage and a household and a career and a life all at the same time, and still maintain his integrity and sense of self.

I saw how important it was that he’d been a strong father, modeling principles and boundaries and an unshakeable commitment to order and stability in our home. I’d often resented him for that, wishing he’d been more flexible or forgiving or gentle. But from my own perspective at 40 years old now, I could suddenly see how that strength had protected us, shielded us, given us a stable foundation from which we could strike out into the world with confidence.

I sensed that I’d reached a resolution with my father, that I had made peace with him and healed the essential rift between us. That realization triggered a new flood of gratitude and joy, because that same healing and connection is what I want for my relationship with my own kids. The doubt that I’d ever find it with my father meant I could never be sure I’d find it with my children.

And that made me realize that this was the first intensive healing experience that I had undertaken from the perspective of an adult. I had always felt like a child, like a boy, healing some foundational wound in the hope of finally “growing up.” But not this time. This time I could allow my vulnerability, tenderness, and heartbreak to come to the surface without abandoning my identity as a father, husband, and leader. 

The aftermath

I wrapped up the session around 2 pm, and took a taxi to a nearby nature spa for my integration and recovery. I felt like a newborn, raw and incredibly sensitive to every sensation, internal and external.

I had little appetite, but ate a mushroom soup in honor of the plant. I then spent a couple of hours rotating between a sauna, cold plunge, and jacuzzi at a local hotel we visit frequently, nestled in the green forest amidst the soft rainfall of the wet season.

Returning home that evening, I was overcome with joy and happiness seeing my kids. Their beauty and perfection were just so vivid, so palpable. The same with my wife – there almost seemed to be a halo over her head, her beauty radiating outward like the sun.

Over the next week, my interactions with my kids felt so different. Suddenly, they seemed more patient, caring, thoughtful, curious, and cooperative, in stark contrast to how I’d perceived them in recent weeks. I knew that the change had to have been in me, not them, and all the same, I couldn’t believe how much more easeful, meaningful, and fun our time together was. I think they sensed my openness and safety, and expressed so many new thoughts, feelings, and questions to me. It was as if I was getting to know them for the first time.

Long-term effects

As expected, I found the effects of my mushroom journey slowly wore off over the following days.

During the next week, I had a highly elevated mood, and found so much joy in the most mundane everyday routines. I was far more patient and present with the kids. An all-day travel day back to California, 4 days later, was not only much more tolerable, I actually found it fun! Normally, my wife and I take turns managing the kids for the 4-hour flight, but this time I happily played with them the whole time.

Visiting my parents a couple of days after that, we had a series of lovely conversations, talking about what I had seen and experienced. I was moved to tears again at the privilege of being able to share my insights with them and how much I appreciated their role in my life.

Surprisingly, I found my desire to drink alcohol dropped to zero. I’d never really enjoyed the taste or the experience, and used it mostly to help me slow down at the end of a stressful workday. It’s been more than a month since my session and the desire hasn’t returned.

At work, I felt much greater emotional fluidity and warmth toward my team and customers, emphasizing our shared values and the bigger picture of our work, which is increasingly about helping businesses adopt AI. I can already see that I’m going to emphasize community and the human-to-human connection much more as a result of this experience.

Takeaways

It’s now been over a month since my magic mushroom experience, and I’m left with several takeaways.

Healing can progress and reaches resolution

Looking back on this experience, I realize that I had long operated under an assumption: that healing was never-ending. I had expected to never really reach resolution. I assumed I would just keep uncovering new forms of psychological damage for the rest of my life, like an infinitely deep well.

But this experience taught me a different perspective: that while the overarching journey of personal growth may be infinite, there is a possibility of reaching true resolution along the way. I was surprised to find such resolution with my father, who had been the focal point of my healing thus far. I was so happy to find I could undertake this journey from the perspective of an adult, feeling in control and empowered even in the most vulnerable moments.

Most of all, I loved being able to walk away from this experience without feeling like I had to fundamentally reshape my life. I quite like my life. This was more like a firmware reset, putting me back in touch with my values and sense of self, without demanding that I make dramatic changes as a result.

Healing does progress, and it does reach resolution even as it extends to the distant horizon.

The role of psychedelics in an age of AI-driven change

We are pivoting the business strongly toward AI, especially its implementation in small and medium businesses. And the more I think about it, the more I believe that psychedelics and other forms of healing are going to play a crucial part in the AI era. 

The defining feature of this new era we’re entering is going to be ever-accelerating change. The condition of “future shock” first described by Alvin Toffler in 1970 is only now truly coming to fruition, as we enter a literally inhuman pace of change.

Humans are going to need new ways of adapting to change at every level of society and the economy. They’re going to have to “unlearn” old patterns, old ways of thinking, old paradigms, and old assumptions at breathtaking speed. That unlearning may be an even greater challenge than learning the new.

One definition of “grief” is “the sudden realization that a form of value is ending.” That’s the case when someone dies, and the realization of the love you feel for them hits you in full force. It’s the case when you miss out on a hoped-for opportunity, or a season of life abruptly ends, or a tragedy strikes in your family or in the world. As humans, we tend to quickly get used to the status quo, including what is good, valuable, beautiful, and true. Often, we realize its full worth only once it disappears.

It isn’t easy to grieve on command. As humans, we tend to do everything we can to avoid it. But perhaps these substances could be a medium for releasing our grief more reliably as the world shifts under our feet. Maybe psychedelics are emerging into the light at this moment in history because now is the time we need them to evolve our human consciousness at the speed that AI, a new form of consciousness, is demanding. 

The gift of a safe, accessible tool for healing

This wasn’t my first encounter with psychedelics. I’d previously experimented with LSD at Burning Man and completed a 3-day ayahuasca retreat in the mountains.

I count those as some of the most meaningful, impactful experiences of my life. And yet in retrospect, I realize that I’ve always operated under the assumption that in order to have the most valuable experience, I had to go to the furthest extremes.

But why should that be the case? Why should someone have to travel to the furthest reaches of the Peruvian jungle, or skirt the law, or risk their reputation, or spend a lot of money, or take multiple days off work, or take the most powerful dose, to receive love and truth?

If healing is a universal phenomenon and a universal human need, which is what I believe, then we need to find more affordable, accessible, risk-free, and scalable means of accessing it. For so long, tools for healing have been illegal, socially sanctioned, or at least labeled weird and taboo. Modern society has long considered it too dangerous to venture into the unconscious, the repressed, and the traumatic.

How fortunate that that taboo is now passing, and that we’re starting to open up avenues for healing in a format that is so incredibly accessible. Almost anyone can take a day off work, consume some plants, and lie on a bed for a few hours. What a time to be alive, when we can pursue deep forms of healing without disrupting our normal routines.

I’ve become a believer and advocate for psychedelic-assisted therapy, and intend to use my influence to make it more accessible in the world.

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I remember the exact moment I was radicalized about climate change. 

Standing on the front porch of our new home in Southern California in the summer of 2020, I watched the sky turn a burnt orange as wildfires blazed in the inland summer heat. The particles of smoke didn’t just fill the air—they filled our lungs. I coughed and wheezed throughout the day and night, unable to think or work effectively, as my body’s systems were overwhelmed by an atmosphere suddenly hostile to human life.

Far more worryingly, my wife Lauren was pregnant with our first child at the time. Every parenting book I’d read emphasized the importance of clean air for fetal development, and here we were, trapped in a toxic cloud. We sealed the windows and doors on the worst days, bought half a dozen air purifiers, and cranked the AC as high as it would go. But still, I laid awake at night, feeling powerless against a force far beyond my control.

It was that summer when climate change stopped being an abstract concept and became viscerally personal for me. I realized that this wasn’t a one-time freak event—every summer we could expect deteriorating air quality from rampant wildfires. It had become part of the backdrop of our lives in Southern California, as predictable as June gloom and earthquake tremors.

Picture how this scenario is likely to play out over the next twenty years: You’re trying to work from home on a sweltering afternoon when the power flickers. Your computer monitor goes dark. The air conditioning sputters to a stop. Within minutes, the room temperature climbs from a comfortable 72 degrees to an oppressive 85, then 90. Your body starts producing sweat faster than it can evaporate. Your thinking becomes sluggish. The careful systems you’ve built—both digital and physical—begin to break down.

This convergence of physical heat, failing infrastructure, and human vulnerability isn’t just a temporary inconvenience. It’s a preview of the fundamental challenge that Jeff Goodell explores in The Heat Will Kill You First, a book that forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: all our routines for productive living and working are built on the assumption of a stable climate. It no longer makes sense for me to teach people how to build productive systems without taking into account the increasing instability of our wider environment.

So many climate debates still focus on abstract concepts like emissions targets and policy frameworks, or expend tremendous energy trying to forecast the exact degree of temperature rise decades in the future. But an increasing number of people are discovering what I learned that smoky summer of 2020—climate change is already here, already personal, and already reshaping our daily lives.

Goodell’s book zeroes in on perhaps the most immediate and universal manifestation of that change: the direct impact of heat on human bodies, communities, and ecosystems. 

As someone who thinks constantly about how we capture, organize, and act on information, I found myself reading his work through a unique lens. The climate crisis isn’t just an environmental problem. It’s fundamentally an information processing challenge. We’re drowning in data about rising temperatures, yet struggling to translate that knowledge into meaningful action. It’s the ultimate test of whether we can build a “Second Brain” not just for ourselves, but for our entire civilization.

In this piece, I’ll share the insights from Goodell’s book that surprised me the most, challenged my assumptions about human adaptability, and revealed why heat—not hurricanes, floods, or wildfires—represents the most profound threat to how we live and work in the 21st century.

The Invisible Killer Among Us

Here’s the fact that permanently shifted my understanding of climate risks: Heat kills more people than all other natural disasters combined.

A study in The Lancet estimated that 489,000 people worldwide died from extreme heat in 2019. That’s more than hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and earthquakes put together. It’s also more than deaths from guns or illegal drugs. Between 260,000 and 600,000 people die each year just from inhaling smoke from wildfires—a secondary effect of heat-amplified fires.

Yet heat remains largely invisible in our collective consciousness. We name hurricanes. We measure earthquakes on the Richter scale. We have sophisticated early warning systems for tornadoes. But heat waves? They pass through our communities like silent predators, leaving behind a trail of death that often goes uncounted and unnoticed.

This invisibility isn’t just a measurement problem—it’s a fundamental flaw in how we process information about gradual versus acute threats. Our brains, evolved to respond to immediate dangers, struggle to recognize slow-moving catastrophes. It’s the same reason we procrastinate on long-term projects while responding instantly to urgent emails.

Since 1970, Earth’s temperature has spiked faster than in any comparable forty-year period in recorded history. The eight years between 2015 and 2022 were the hottest on record. In 2022 alone, 850 million people lived in regions that experienced all-time high temperatures.

But numbers alone don’t capture what this means for human bodies and systems.

Researchers project that by 2100, half of the world’s population will be exposed to a life-threatening combination of heat and humidity. In parts of the world, temperatures will rise so high that simply stepping outside for a few hours “will result in death even for the fittest of humans.”

This isn’t a distant future scenario. It’s a reality that’s already emerging in unexpected places.

In western Pakistan, where only the wealthy have air conditioning, it’s already too hot for human survival several weeks each year. Holy cities like Mecca and Jerusalem, where millions gather for religious pilgrimages, have become what Goodell calls “caldrons of sweat.”

The scale of it already defies comprehension. In the summer of 2022, nine hundred million people in China—63 percent of the nation’s population—endured a two-month extreme heat wave that killed crops and sparked wildfires. One weather historian declared: “There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China.”

The economic toll is also staggering. Researchers at Dartmouth College estimate that since the 1990s, extreme heat waves have cost the global economy $16 trillion. But the human costs go far beyond GDP:

• Heat lowers children’s test scores
• It raises the risk of miscarriage in pregnant women
• Prolonged exposure increases death rates from heart and kidney disease
• When stressed by heat, people become more impulsive and prone to conflict
• Racial slurs and hate speech spike on social media during heat waves
• Suicides rise
• Gun violence increases
• Sexual assaults become more frequent

In Africa and the Middle East, studies have found direct links between higher temperatures and the outbreak of civil wars.

Heat doesn’t just kill our bodies. It kills our civilized selves.

The Machine Inside: Understanding Our Thermal Limits

Humans are heat machines. Just being alive generates heat. 

Every thought, every heartbeat, every breath produces thermal energy that must be dissipated. When you move a muscle, only about 20 percent of the energy goes to the actual contraction—the other 80 percent is released as heat.

This biological fact creates an absolute temperature ceiling for human survival: a wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). Beyond that threshold, our bodies generate heat faster than we can dissipate it, regardless of shade, fans, or how much water we drink.

Drinking water by itself doesn’t actually cool your core body temperature. While dehydration can exacerbate heat exhaustion, you can be fully hydrated and still die of heatstroke. The only effective treatment is rapid cooling of core body temperature, through ice baths, cooling the palms and soles where blood circulates close to the surface, or other direct cooling methods.

As a systems thinker, I’m fascinated by second and third-order effects—the cascading consequences that ripple out from initial changes, like the spreading ripples in a pond. Goodell’s exploration of how heat is redrawing the map of disease distribution revealed consequences I hadn’t imagined.

For example, we know that the heat-loving Aedes aegypti mosquito is expanding its range northward and to higher altitudes. By 2080, five billion people—60 percent of the world’s population—may be at risk of dengue fever. 

Mexico City, historically too cold for these mosquitoes, has always remained mostly free of yellow fever, dengue, and Zika. But as temperatures rise, Aedes aegypti is moving in, bringing these diseases to 21 million unprepared residents. I’ve personally noticed the uptick in mosquitoes in Mexico City from 2019, when we first lived there, to today. 

Nepal, nearly free of mosquito-borne diseases until recently, saw dengue cases explode from 135 in 2015 to 28,109 in 2022.

Even more alarming, an estimated 40,000 viruses lurk in the bodies of mammals, of which a quarter could infect humans. Climate scientist Colin Carlson estimates that coming decades will see about 300,000 first encounters between species that normally don’t interact, leading to roughly 15,000 spillovers of viruses into new hosts.

The pattern extends beyond mosquitoes. Lyme disease cases in the US have tripled since the late 1990s. It’s not just the heat expanding tick ranges, but also increasingly fragmented landscapes. As forests are carved into suburban developments, fox and owl populations decline, leading to explosions in white-footed mice populations—the main reservoir for Lyme disease. Young ticks feed on infected mice, then spread the disease to humans.

We’re not just heating the planet—we’re creating a massive biological experiment with unpredictable results.

Antarctica: The Doomsday Glacier and Our Coastal Future

Of all the places on Earth, Antarctica might seem the least connected to our daily lives. Yet what happens to the ice sheets there will determine the future of every coastal city on the planet.

Goodell takes us on a research expedition to Thwaites Glacier—nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier”—one of the largest glaciers in West Antarctica. The question driving their research is stark: Is the West Antarctic ice sheet on the verge of unstoppable collapse?

A stable ice sheet means coastal cities have time to adapt. An unstable ice sheet means goodbye to Miami, New York, Shanghai, Mumbai—virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world, including our hometown of Long Beach, California.

To understand the risk, consider this: Seventy percent of Earth’s water is frozen in Antarctica’s ice sheets, some nearly three miles thick. If all of Greenland melted, sea levels would rise 22 feet. If Antarctica melted? Two hundred feet. The world’s coastlines would be obliterated.

Three million years ago, when atmospheric CO2 levels were similar to today and temperatures only slightly warmer, sea levels were at least 20 feet higher. This suggests massive melting is already “baked in” to our future. The only question is how fast it happens.

The mechanism of potential catastrophe is elegant in its terrifying simplicity. Large parts of West Antarctica’s glaciers lie below sea level, resting on ground that slopes downward inland—imagine a giant soup bowl filled with ice. Warm ocean water can penetrate under the ice, melting it from below. As the glacier retreats down the slope, more ice is exposed to warm water, accelerating the melt in a feedback loop that scientists call “marine ice sheet instability.”

The False Promise of Technological Salvation

As someone who advocates for using technology to augment human capabilities, I was particularly struck by Goodell’s analysis of air conditioning—our primary technological response to heat.

Here’s the uncomfortable reality: Air conditioning is not a cooling technology at all. It’s simply a tool for heat redistribution, moving thermal energy from inside to outside while consuming massive amounts of electricity.

The global spread of AC is accelerating climate change even as it provides temporary relief. In China, 75 percent of homes in Beijing and Shanghai now have air conditioning, up from near zero twenty years ago. Over the last decade, 10 percent of China’s skyrocketing electricity growth has been due to cooling—in a country still largely dependent on coal.

As one researcher put it: “Comfort is destroying the future, one click at a time.”

Pakistan produces about 0.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, and the average Pakistani is responsible for less than one-fifteenth the emissions of an American. Yet Pakistanis suffer disproportionately from extreme heat they didn’t create. When the power fails—as it often does—the consequences are deadly. In Sahiwal, eight babies died in a hospital ICU when extreme heat combined with a power outage shut down the air conditioning.

The Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987, offers both a model of hope and a reason for caution. When scientists discovered that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, the world acted swiftly. Within two years, an international treaty cut CFC use in half. Today, they’re outlawed by 197 countries, and the ozone layer is slowly recovering.

But we replaced CFCs with HFCs—chemicals that don’t harm ozone but are greenhouse gases up to 15,000 times more potent than CO2. Every solution can create new problems.

Heat as a Hyperlocal Phenomenon

One of Goodell’s most important insights is that heat waves are more like stories than meteorological events. Each has its own setting, cast of characters, and dramatic flash points.

A 99-degree day in Buffalo is fundamentally different from a 99-degree day in Las Vegas—not just meteorologically, but sociologically. Buffalo residents are less likely to have air conditioning, less experienced in dealing with extreme heat, and less connected to social networks that check on vulnerable neighbors.

The U.S. National Weather Service ranking system reflects this confusion. Heat watches, warnings, and advisories have no standardized definitions—local offices decide what each category means in their area.

Nobody should die in a heat wave. People die because they are alone, lack resources, don’t understand warning signs, or fear losing their jobs if they stop working. They die from ignorance about basic heat safety: whether to open windows, how much water to drink, when cold baths help or hurt, what a racing heart means.

The 2003 European heat wave killed 15,000 people in France in less than two weeks. Nearly a thousand lived in central Paris, many in top-floor apartments where heat built up beneath zinc roofs, literally cooking residents as if in an oven. It took weeks to recover all the bodies. Entire buildings had to be evacuated due to the pervasive smell of death.

Yet France now has one of the world’s best heat warning systems. Answers exist if we choose to implement them.

The Great Adaptation: Engineering for a Superheated World

Reading Goodell’s prescriptions for urban adaptation, I recognized parallels to the challenges we face in personal knowledge management and artificial intelligence. Just as we need to retrofit our thinking systems for information abundance, we need to retrofit our cities for thermal abundance.

The challenges are twofold:

First, how do we ensure new growth happens in heat-smart ways? Another fifty years of suburban sprawl would be catastrophic. Cities need density, public transit, green space, trees, water features, shade, and thermally intelligent design. Every new building should be both efficient and survivable during power outages.

Second, how do we fix what already exists? The vast majority of current buildings are ill-suited for extreme heat—poorly insulated, badly sited, dependent on air conditioning. Do we tear down and rebuild? Retrofit? How do we add green space to crowded cities? How do we banish concrete and invite nature?

Trees are climate heroes, but they’re also climate victims. In 2011, combined drought and heat killed 10 percent of urban trees in Texas—six million died in months. Analysis suggests that in a midrange warming scenario, three-quarters of urban trees could die from heat and drought by 2050. Globally, we’re losing ten billion trees annually while planting only five billion.

We need new approaches, new species, and new ways of thinking about urban ecosystems. It’s the greatest engineering challenge of our time.

From Information to Transformation

As I finished Goodell’s book, I kept returning to a fundamental question: Why do we struggle to act on information about slow-moving catastrophes?

The answer lies partly in how our brains process threats. We’re wired for immediate dangers, not gradual degradation. But it also reflects a failure of our systems for capturing, organizing, and acting on critical information.

Climate change is, I believe, fundamentally a knowledge management problem. We have the data. We understand the mechanisms. We even know many of the solutions. What we lack is the ability to transform information into action at the necessary scale and speed, and the motivation and consensus needed to do so.

This is where I think the principles of Building a Second Brain, especially when augmented by the latest AI models, could be useful. We can use such systems to:

• Capture the full scope of climate impacts across all domains of life
• Organize information in ways that reveal connections and dependencies
• Distill insights into achievable objectives, actionable plans to realize them, and targets for advocacy and funding
• Create solutions in forms that motivate change, and express them in language and stories that resonate with more people

The heat crisis demands that we extend the principles of individual productivity and business growth that have shaped the modern world to the realm of collective survival.

Goodell’s book ends with a preview of our transformed future: “The tree you used to climb when you were a kid will die. The beach where you kissed your partner will be underwater. Mosquitoes and other insects will be year-round companions. New diseases will emerge. Cults of cool will celebrate the spiritual purity of ice. You’ll grill slabs of lab-grown ‘meat’ and drink Zinfandel from Alaska. Your digital watch will monitor your internal body temperature. Border walls will be fortified. Entrepreneurs will make millions selling you micro cooling devices. Fourth of July celebrations will become life-threatening events. Snow will feel exotic.”

This isn’t dystopian fiction. It’s the trajectory we’re already on.

But trajectories can change. The Montreal Protocol proved we can act swiftly when we understand the threat. The question is whether we can process information about heat—diffuse, gradual, unequally distributed—with the same clarity that allowed us to recognize the ozone hole.

What You Can Do Now

Knowledge without action is merely fuel for anxiety. Here are concrete steps you can take to begin adapting to our heating world:

For Personal Safety:

1. Learn the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke—for yourself and loved ones
2. Understand that hydration alone won’t prevent heat stroke; cooling is essential
3. Create a heat emergency plan, including cooling strategies and communication with vulnerable neighbors
4. Never take Tylenol or aspirin for heat-related symptoms

For Your Home and Work:

1. Assess your spaces for passive cooling opportunities (shade, ventilation, insulation)
2. Create backup plans for power outages during heat waves
3. Consider heat resilience in any renovation or moving decisions
4. Plant trees and create green spaces wherever possible

For Your Community:

1. Advocate for heat action plans in your city
2. Support urban greening initiatives
3. Join or create networks that check on vulnerable neighbors during heat waves
4. Push for workplace heat safety standards

For Systemic Change:

1. Make climate action a non-negotiable criterion for your political choices
2. Divest from fossil fuels and invest in climate-friendly industries
3. Support organizations working on climate adaptation
4. Share knowledge about heat risks and solutions in your networks

The coming heat will kill—but it doesn’t have to kill you or those you care about. With the right information, preparation, and collective action, we can adapt to the thermal transformation of our planet.

The challenge isn’t just surviving the heat. It’s maintaining our humanity, creativity, and capacity for joy in a world growing hotter by the day. That’s a project worthy of our best thinking, our most innovative technology, and our deepest commitment to each other.

The future may be hot, but it doesn’t have to be hopeless.

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