# #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  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Tim Ferriss Show]] - Full Title: #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 - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/22697453-2a43-4c75-9e59-64b6803caf3d ## Highlights - The Power of Storytelling Key takeaways: - Storytellers can change the world. - Every culture has a unique answer to a fundamental question. Transcript: Speaker 1 And the way to do that was not through politics or polemics, but through storytelling because, you know, storytellers, as you well know Tim, changed the world. And what we were trying to share with the public was kind of the fundamental revelation of anthropology, the idea that the other peoples of the world aren't failed attempts at being you. You know, they're not failed attempts at being modern. Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question. What does it mean to be human and alive? And when the peoples of the world answer that, they do so in the 7,000 different voices of humanity. ([Time 0:09:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4f6f7623-8c07-4cb2-9ad3-fff42b7764fb)) - The Polynesian Wayfinders: A True Story of Extraordinary Navigation Key takeaways: - The Polynesian Wayfinders had an extraordinary ability to find their way across the ocean. - This ability is still alive in modern day Polynesians. Transcript: Speaker 1 We really wanted to go to places where the beliefs practices revealed this extraordinary universal truth. And I think you asked which was the most extraordinary of all, and it would have to be the Polynesian Wayfinders. Speaker 3 Yeah, that blew my mind. Speaker 1 The type story of the book. I mean, this is just an amazing thing if you think about it. Even today, members of the Polynesian Voyage in society can name 250 stars in the night sky. They can sense the presence of distant atolls of islands ([Time 0:12:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8c9b695-8920-4bc1-8be3-d450bda7c723)) - The Geography of Genius: Polynesia Key takeaways: - The ocean can be easily followed with the ease with which terrestrial explorer would follow a river to the sea. - Each of the chapters in the book, "Tim," about the ocean, became films. Transcript: Speaker 1 Ocean and can be followed with the ease with which terrestrial explorer would follow a river to the sea. And each of these chapters in that book, Tim, the subjects also became films, of course, that we did for the geographic. I kind of tried to find it, not a punchline, but a kind of line that would sum it all up. And so with Polynesia, it was very simple. If you took all of the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon and applied it to an understanding of the ocean, what you would get as Polynesia. ([Time 0:13:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/be59b162-afcc-4c42-ab81-c6a7fd3c32c7))