Hall of Voices
People
Guests, authors, thinkers, teachers and historical figures who come up on the show. 248 entries.
A
- Abraham
Tamir quips that the founder of the monotheistic religions was Abraham, who arguably had his own 'inner Abraham' to channel the idea of one God, a play on Abraham-Hicks.
- Adolf Hitler
Samantha's extreme example of how vulnerable everyone is asleep: 'even a Hitler is innocent in sleep.'
- Al Pacino
Tamir recalls Pacino's speech in Any Given Sunday about how, as you get older, things get taken from you, as a parallel to Murakami's pinball metaphor of loss.
- Alan Metter
- Alan Watts
British-American popularizer of Eastern philosophy; Tamir cites his lecture on the court jester about taking life sincerely rather than seriously.
- Albert Einstein
Mentioned with Newton as having done his key work before 26. He's also credited with the line that insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different outcome, which…
- Aldous Huxley
Author of Brave New World, which Grant cites as science fiction shelved as literature.
- Alex Jones
A lot of him went into Troll. Logan calls him a legitimately talented broadcaster who knows exactly how to make engaging content, and places him nearer the true-believer end of the spectrum.
- Alex O'Connor
Tamir admires his academic debates with Christians, which aim to surface the truth rather than persuade; part of what got Tamir into the Gospels and Gnosticism.
- Alfred Birnbaum
Murakami's early English translator, who did the original translation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, later retranslated by Jay Rubin.
- Ambalal Patel
Sheela's father, who took her to hear Bhagwan's discourse because he believed that if this man lived long enough he would be 'the second Buddha'. He read Kahlil Gibran to her on his lap and…
- American Psychiatric Association
- Andre Agassi
Cited by Tamir as an elite athlete who reached the top of his sport and hated it, illustrating achievement without inner vision.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
Director of the 1972 film Solaris, likely the poster behind Tamir.
- Andrew Tate
Both Tamir and Logan think he is 'full grift': self-made success-story self-help with misogyny attached. He rose to fame as Logan finished Troll, so readers' comparisons are retroactive…
- Andy Frisella
Creator of the 75 Hard program that Ian is doing during the episode (referred to only as 'he').
- Anton Chekhov
Russian writer behind the principle of Chekhov's gun, which Grant says everyone makes a big deal of.
- Apollo
The god the Oracle of Delphi was said to channel.
- Aristotle
Logan names him alongside Marcus Aurelius as a thinker extremist self-help figures quote to lend themselves legitimacy.
B
- Baoshu
Chinese writer of The Redemption of Time, the authorized fan sequel to the Three-Body trilogy.
- Barack Obama
Mia thinks about Obama before entering a room of people from different religions, channeling his diplomat/peacekeeper archetype to unite people on something common.
- Barry Sonnenfeld
Director of Men in Black and The Addams Family and former cinematographer for the Coen Brothers, who had recently sat in the same studio chair as Grant.
- BBC
- BBC / John Freeman
- Beatrice Portinari
Dante's muse. He met her once and never got together with her, but she plays central roles in La Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy.
- Benjamin Disraeli
Mentioned by Tamir as the possible alternative source of the 'die at 30, buried at 80' saying.
- Benjamin Franklin
Tamir attributes to him (unsure whether it was Franklin or Disraeli) the line that most men die at 30 but aren't buried until 80, used as a motif for living without a vision.
- Bernie Madoff
The archetypal full grifter. Tamir contrasts him with the far more common 'half-grifts' of YouTube.
- Bill Gates
Colin uses him twice. First, he didn't invent DOS but bought it and built Windows from it, which shows that the work behind an idea matters more than the idea. Second, his goal was never to…
- Billie Holiday
The other cassette Tyler bought in that 1993 secondhand shop, part of his story about the joy of discovering an artist's back catalog.
- Blake Crouch
American science-fiction novelist, author of Recursion, which Tamir had just finished reading. Its lesson that life can't be engineered to avoid pain anchors the second half of the…
- Brad Pitt
One of the celebrities at the 'resort' in Samantha's grocery-store lucid dream, people who had woken up inside the dream of being human.
- Bram Stoker
Author of Dracula, read in Grant's university class.
- Brian Cox
British physicist. Colin recalls him saying the size of the universe is what blows him away: 100 to 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and about 2 trillion galaxies in the observable…
- Brian Johnson
Mentioned as the person closest to chasing an immortality formula, in the aside that life is a game nobody wins in the end.
C
- C.S. Lewis
Author of the Narnia books and science fiction whose nonfiction Tamir has recently started reading; his memoir of losing his wife gives the episode its line that grief feels like fear.
- Carl Jung
Swiss psychiatrist; Tamir says Hesse and Jung were neighbours and friends, which shows in Hesse's work, as an example of novelists absorbing non-fiction knowledge.
- Carolyn Elliott
Author of 'Existential Kink'. Nev cites her (as 'Caroline Mice') for the idea that humans come here for the darkness too, not just the 'love and light'.
- Catherine Zeta-Jones
Another celebrity in Samantha's lucid-dream 'resort' of awakened people.
- Charles F. Haanel
Early-20th-century author of The Master Key System, whom Tamir credits as one of the founders of modern self-help and an influence on Napoleon Hill. The 'Makers of Empire' excerpt on…
- Charlie Morley
British lucid-dreaming teacher and author. Samantha says the first lucid-dreaming book she read was by him and that she uses his process: create a totem, then face the worst thing you can…
- Christopher Nolan
Director of Interstellar; not named in the episode.
- Coffeezilla
Tamir's favorite chronicler of YouTuber grifts. He targets the reckless more than the outright criminal, often crypto scams, and insists recklessness is still wrong.
- Colin Gerrard
UK-born entrepreneur who built companies and led sales teams around the world (Belgium, the UK, sourcing in China). He also directed the award-winning short film 'Eli', made the earlier…
- Colin Gerrard's grandfather
- Colin Gerrard's mentor
- Connie Zweig
Co-editor of Meeting the Shadow, the essay collection Tamir holds up during the interview.
- Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams (eds.)
- Conor McGregor
Tamir's example of how success and ego erode hunger: monk-like dedication early on, then whiskey and losses.
D
- Dale Carnegie
Author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, one of the classics Tyler flipped through; he found most self-help told him things life had already taught him.
- Dan Peña
Controversial Mexican-American businessman whose style of motivation is telling people how full of crap they are. Tamir quotes his line that self-help is the biggest scam of all time…
- Dante Alighieri
Tamir points to statues of Dante in Florence as evidence that Italian culture honored poets and artists alongside warriors, a multifaceted ideal of manhood.
- David Goggins
Symbol of the hardcore, push-through mentality. Tamir says that mindset is right for getting to the finish line of a run but not for every moment of life.
- Denis Villeneuve
Director of the recent Dune films Mia loves (not named on air).
- Dolores Cannon
American past-life regression hypnotist and creator of QHHT. Samantha is 'a huge fan', calls her 'the goat', and says Tamir would love her.
- Donald Trump
Mentioned in passing by Ian among the political stressors layered on top of unresolved childhood wounds.
- Douglas Coupland
Canadian ('local') writer who named Generation X, the cynical generation Grant says he belongs to.
- DreamWorks Animation
- Dwayne Johnson
Colin's example of someone with a trigger who still rolls with the joke. On Ellen, Kevin Hart teased him and he shot back a punchline instead of losing it. Colin also loves his movie line…
E
- Eckhart Tolle
Spiritual teacher and author of The Power of Now, mentioned in passing in the discussion of living in the past.
- Ed Harding
A well-known Michigan artist who, after viewing her portfolio, accepted 21-year-old Sheela as an apprentice to teach her lithography and watercolor. She never started: she visited India…
- Eddie Alvarez
McGregor's opponent at Madison Square Garden, a fight Tamir calls one of the best displays of martial arts ever.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Originator of the five stages of grief model (1969) that Mia's methodology responds to.
- Elizabeth Holmes
Colin calls her the antithesis of authenticity: she went around telling everyone how authentic she was, everyone believed in her, and she ended up with an 11-year prison sentence. Tamir…
- Elizabeth Taylor
English novelist (not the actress) who wrote Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, a nearly forgotten book Grant champions.
- Ella Fitzgerald
Tyler bought a secondhand cassette of hers at 21, in 1993, and felt the joy of discovering an artist with a whole back catalog to explore.
- Ellen DeGeneres
Host of the daytime chat show where Colin saw the Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson exchange. Colin first misremembers her as Megyn Kelly.
- Elon Musk
Tamir's example of a figure many people describe as chaotic. He uses it to ask whether people who wreak havoc in their own sphere share a source with those drawn into extremism.
- Erich Fromm
German-American psychoanalyst cited in the episode's opening clip ('Dr Eric from') for the claim that we are more intelligent, wiser and capable of better judgment asleep than awake.
- Ernest Hemingway
Author of The Sun Also Rises, whose slow fishing interlude Grant came to love only years later.
- Erving Goffman
Canadian-American sociologist. Logan cites his 1950s argument that public life is a performance in which everyone wears masks and follows a script until they get home, and then asks what…
- Esther Hicks
Channels 'Abraham', a council of non-physical beings, at Abraham-Hicks conferences. Samantha went to one in 2022 and found the message 'very high frequency', all love and acceptance. She is…
- Esther Perel
Mentioned as the renowned therapist who helps Neil Strauss in The Truth after his sex addiction and infidelity.
F
- Floyd Mayweather
McGregor's big-money boxing opponent, mentioned as part of his decline.
- Fortuna
Tamir says where someone is going is 'up to you and Fortuna and your fate', not his business to preach about.
- Frank Herbert
Author of Dune; Mia admires that he wrote six Dune books and believed in his world so much he basically coexisted in it.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Tamir says President Roosevelt was one of the mentors Napoleon Hill dreamed of in Think and Grow Rich.
- Franz Kafka
Tamir asks whether Kafka's absurdity parallels their talk of enigmas. Tyler describes Kafka as crippled by his father yet turning pain into art, a 'special species of happiness', and says…
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Colin invokes 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger', adding that not everything does, but being bullied made him stronger.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist; Grant contrasts the absurd but aspirational narrator of Notes from Underground with Dazai's hopeless protagonist.
G
- G. K. Chesterton
English writer, quoted inside the Alan Watts passage: being amazed at a gorgon or griffin is one thing, but being amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe is a higher thing.
- Gary Dahl
The 'fellow' in Colin's Pet Rock story who ignored the skeptics.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Cited by Tamir as the voice of hustle culture, boasting he took no days off between 20 and 30; Tamir questions trading away one's youthful 20s.
- Gautama Buddha
Tamir uses the Buddha as an example of someone perfectly happy to leave his body behind in search of full oneness, which he sees as a late, advanced stage of a death practice.
- George Clooney
Another celebrity who welcomed Samantha in her lucid dream after she 'woke up' inside it.
- George Lucas
- George Orwell
Author of 1984, which Grant cites as science fiction shelved as literature because of the author's skill.
- Grant Shipway
Canadian writer, lifelong student of literature and host of the YouTube channel Grant Loves Books, which offers in-depth analyses of great 19th- and 20th-century novels. At 26 he left…
- Gregory Maguire
Author of Wicked, the Oz retelling Samantha compares to The Redemption of Time.
H
- Hans Fallada
German author of The Drinker, which Grant read recently: deeply depressing, yet its protagonist still has desire.
- Haruki Murakami
Japanese novelist and one of Tamir's favourite authors, who brought him back to fiction. Grant thinks he is wildly overrated, 'the Stephen King of Japanese literature', and dislikes his…
- Helen of Troy
The married queen whom Paris took to Troy, the cause of the Trojan War. Tamir's example of love causing destruction.
- Herbert Kaufman
American writer generally credited with the 'Makers of Empire' / 'The Dreamers' text that Haanel reproduced in The Master Key System; not named on the podcast.
- Herman Melville
Logan notes he actually worked on a whaling ship before writing Moby-Dick, an example of lived experience informing great fiction.
- Hermann Hesse
German-Swiss novelist (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf). Tamir read him as philosophical fiction; Tamir says Hesse knew Carl Jung and that Jung's influence shows in his writing.
- Homer
Ancient Greek poet of The Odyssey, part of the classic philosophical reading Tamir did before turning to modern fiction.
I
- Ian Coll
Squamish, BC based entrepreneur, former cinematographer, and men's wellness facilitator who runs men's groups and retreats and uses shadow work to help people overcome lifelong obstacles…
- Isaac
Young man in Colin's business whose line 'I didn't do it for you, I did it for myself' became Colin's touchstone for authenticity.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
Yiddish-language writer of pre-WWII Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Reading him gave Tyler, raised in rural Alberta, a deep knowledge of Jewish culture and Yiddish words before he…
- Isaac Newton
Colin holds him up as someone who actually mattered, in contrast to influencers. When he hit a problem he couldn't solve, instead of complaining he went into another room and invented…
J
- J. D. Salinger
Author of The Catcher in the Rye, which Grant fears would now feel too self-indulgent.
- J. R. R. Tolkien
Logan points out that The Lord of the Rings draws on Tolkien's love of language, mythology and his Catholic faith, but also heavily on his time in the trenches of World War I.
- J.K. Rowling
Author of the Harry Potter series, referenced via the King's Cross dream scene.
- Jack Kerouac
Beat Generation author of On the Road, a book that changed Grant's world at 19 but no longer resonates with him.
- Jake Paul
Cited with Logan Paul as YouTubers involved in crypto scams who seem not to care about their audience. Logan also mentions watching the Tyson vs. Paul fight, which everyone forgot within…
- James Allen
English philosopher (As a Man Thinketh) named by Tamir among the forerunners of the modern self-help genre.
- James Clear
Author of Atomic Habits, invoked by Tamir as the kind of direct self-improvement book busy people pick over Murakami.
- James Joyce
Irish author of Ulysses. Grant is not a fan but admires his aim of exposing his frustration with his own country, which he wants to do for Canada.
- Jay Rubin
Murakami's English translator (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the new Hard-Boiled Wonderland translation). Salih notes Rubin abridged Wind-Up Bird, so English readers miss passages later…
- Jeff Bezos
Named alongside Zuckerberg as tech leaders driven by the same profit motive as Costco's CEO, in the discussion of why social media draws more anger.
- Jeremiah Abrams
Co-editor of Meeting the Shadow, the essay collection Tamir holds up during the interview.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Co-creator of Seinfeld, which comes up as a show of authentic complainers.
- Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David
- Jesse Armstrong
- Jesus
Tamir's example that there can be no redemption or deliverance without a world of terror, suffering and malice to be delivered from.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
20th-century sage whose parable of the devil and the dropped truth Tamir tells to illustrate how organizing truth into religion and dogma obscures it.
- Joe Pesci
Tamir compares cutting people out of your life to a Joe Pesci character digging a hole in the desert and burying a body.
- Joe Rogan
Before the recording Colin watched podcasts such as Joe Rogan's to compare, and he tells Tamir he'll do great because he gets the best out of people.
- John Carreyrou
Author of Bad Blood, the exposé on Theranos.
- John Dos Passos
American author of the U.S.A. Trilogy, which Grant calls huge, beautiful and creative.
- John Steinbeck
Author of The Grapes of Wrath, cited by Grant as great literature that does something with pain.
- Josef Mengele
In the story behind Colin's film Eli, Mengele made the selection that separated the survivor from his mother and little brother.
- Joseph
Biblical dreamer and dream interpreter who became vizier of Egypt by interpreting Pharaoh's dreams. Tamir: whether or not it happened, the cultural value placed on dreams is immense.
- Joseph Heller
Author of Catch-22, whose ironic humor about war is Grant's model for laughing at pain.
- Jun Ichikawa
- Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Japanese novelist of The Makioka Sisters, one of Grant's all-time favourite Japanese novels.
K
- Kahlil Gibran
Lebanese-American poet whose writing Sheela's father read to her when she was five, sitting on his lap. She says the affection of the reading stuck more than the content.
- Kazuo Ishiguro
Author of An Artist of the Floating World, which Tamir won in Grant's Patreon lottery and has yet to read.
- Kevin Hart
Colin loves that he finds humor in everything. He kept teasing The Rock on Ellen until he got a comeback.
- King David
Traditional author of the Psalms, which Tamir mentions in connection with Jewish mourning rituals.
- King Solomon
Tamir recalls Solomon (in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes) advising that some questions aren't worth trying to answer, supporting detachment from questions like the afterlife.
- Kingsley Amis
Martin Amis's father, also a successful novelist, who said reading his son was like having him in the room ringing a bell and kicking over the furniture.
- Krishna
In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to act while remaining detached from outcomes; Tamir cites this as the reconciliation of desire and non-attachment.
- Kurt Vonnegut
American novelist and one of Grant's favourite authors; Grant saw him speak in Toronto in the 1990s. Cited for saying reading was his version of meditation, and (by Tamir) for his talk on…
L
- L. Frank Baum
Author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the source behind the ruby-slippers metaphor and Wicked.
- Larry David
Co-creator of Seinfeld, mentioned for writing authentic complainers into a story.
- Lawrence Durrell
British author of The Alexandria Quartet, a work Grant finds so inspired he doubts he could ever write anything like it.
- Leo
Salih's friend from Kentucky and co-host of the Murakami podcast Convo on the Shore.
- Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist; Grant marvels that Anna Karenina, written about 150 years ago, still thrills readers.
- Lewis Carroll
Author of Alice in Wonderland; Grant says dragons and fantasy belong there.
- Liu Cixin
Chinese sci-fi author of The Three-Body Problem trilogy, who blessed the fan-written fourth book The Redemption of Time.
- Logan Macnair
Criminology professor at Douglas College and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver who researches radicalization, terrorism, extremism and extremist media strategy; author of the novel Troll…
- Logan Paul
Cited with Jake Paul as an example of half-grift YouTube scams that treat the audience as numbers to milk.
M
- Ma Anand Sheela
Born Sheela Ambalal Patel in Gujarat, India (1949); personal secretary to Osho and spokesperson of the Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon in the early 1980s, widely seen as its…
- Maclain Way and Chapman Way
- Madeline Miller
Author of modern retellings of Greek myth. Tamir mentions her short story Galatea as the kind of short, giftable book publishers should make more of.
- Marc Harris Silverman
Sheela's first husband, whom she still calls by his sannyas name Chinmaya ('Shin Maya' in the captions). They met at school in the US; he had Hodgkin's disease and was given a year and a…
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Lead host of Das Literarische Quartett who defended South of the Border, West of the Sun against Sigrid Löffler's criticism in the 2000 on-air row Salih describes.
- Marcus Aurelius
Author of Meditations, cited as one of the dead you speak with when you read.
- Marilyn
Level-three QHHT practitioner trained by Dolores Cannon, based in Maple Ridge, BC, with a two-to-three-year waiting list. She put Samantha under for about six and a half hours.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Named as one of the 'tech overlords' whose products compete for hours of attention a day.
- Martin Amis
British novelist (London Fields, Dead Babies) whose loud, stylized 1980s prose Grant loved in his twenties and now can't stand.
- Martin Scorsese
- Marvel
- Matt Damon
Star of Elysium, mentioned while identifying the film.
- Matthew Carl Strecher
Murakami scholar and author of 'The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami', who met Murakami at his university and knows his translators. His book gives the episode its framing question: what…
- Meta
- Mia Cosco
Research assistant at Harvard working on psychedelic research, specifically how psychedelics can help with grief; hosts grief dinner parties, death salons and death cafes, and is writing a…
- Michael Phelps
Ian notes Phelps battled depression and anxiety throughout his career, and wonders whether swimming was his own vision or an external path he was simply good at.
- Mieko Kawakami
Japanese novelist who conducted a long conversation with Murakami and pressed him on his female characters; Salih recalls Murakami's relaxed, aloof reaction ('Oh, I never thought about…
- Mike Tyson
Logan watched the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight ('because I hate myself'). It was a huge deal and forgotten days later, his example of ever-shorter news cycles.
- Milo Yiannopoulos
Tamir sees him as the purest troll. He was one of the people Logan studied while writing Troll: an articulate, self-described provocateur 'playing the heel' who wanted to be the target of…
- MrBeast
Mentioned by Tamir to contrast Grant's niche, whiskey-like channel with mass-audience YouTube.
N
- Napoleon Hill
Author of Think and Grow Rich, cited for writing about dreaming of his mentors.
- Neil Strauss
Rolling Stone journalist and author of 'The Game'. His online COVID book club picked Hard-Boiled Wonderland, which led Tamir to his first Murakami book.
- Neill Blomkamp
South African director of District 9 and Elysium; Grant loved Elysium's frightening, dirty opening.
- Nero
Mentioned as the emperor who had Seneca killed.
- Netflix
- Nevena
Nevena (Nev), Instagram @iamnevenag, is a Toronto-raised shadow worker and guide of Serbian/Balkan descent who works mostly with women. She combines shadow work with nervous-system…
- Nikola Tesla
Samantha attributes to 'either Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison' the advice never to go to sleep without making a request to your subconscious.
- Nintendo
O
- Ocean Vuong
Author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, whose poetic prose Tamir says you must be in the mood for.
- Oliver Stone
- Oprah Winfrey
Mia says she subscribes to 'the Oprah Winfrey belief' that you can wish for something but then have to let the wanting rest, applied to her longing to reconnect with her mother.
- Osamu Dazai
Japanese novelist of No Longer Human and The Flowers of Buffoonery. For Grant he is the example of dwelling on pain until there is no desire left; Tamir defends the book's purposeful…
- Osho
Indian mystic also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ('Bhagwan', meaning Lord), whose provocative teachings joined sex and spirituality. Sheela fell in love with him in 1972 at 22 and…
P
- Paris
Trojan prince who took the married Helen to Troy and started a war. Tamir offers him as the classic example of love's dark side; Sheela calls it 'so stupid'.
- Patricia Garfield
Psychologist and author of Creative Dreaming, the used-bookstore find Tamir reads from.
- Paul Allen
Mentioned with Bill Gates in Colin's story about buying DOS and turning it into Windows.
- Paul Verhoeven
Director of RoboCop (1987); not named in the episode.
- Paulo Coelho
Author of The Alchemist; Mia admires his persistence through rejection, believing in the book so much it wasn't an ego trip but a message.
- Peloton cycling instructor
An exercise instructor on bikes, whose name Colin doesn't know. He finds her more genuinely motivating than motivational speakers because she isn't hyping people up; she's visibly working…
- Peter Weller
Star of RoboCop (1987). Grant says 'Peter Weir' but almost certainly means Weller; RoboCop was directed by Paul Verhoeven.
- Philip Gabriel
Murakami translator (Kafka on the Shore, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, among others). Tamir half-jokingly suggests giving the full Wind-Up Bird to Gabriel to translate.
- Prince
Joked about over the 'Purple Rain' tea Tamir serves at the start of the recording.
R
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Named by Tamir as a precursor to the self-help writers of the early 20th century.
- Ray Bradbury
Author of Fahrenheit 451, which Grant cites as science fiction shelved as literature.
- Rhonda Byrne
Implied via The Secret, which Tamir calls the modern version of As a Man Thinketh's message that what you think within becomes what is without.
- Richard Dawkins
Invoked by Grant as an analogy: being a middle-aged student in a class of 20-year-olds is like a religious person having a conversation with Richard Dawkins.
- Ricky Gervais
Creator and star of After Life, which Colin cites.
- Robert Eggers
- Robert Zemeckis
- Robin Williams
Logan's real-life example of the sad clown: always high-energy around people, a 'well-spring of joy', but a fairly sad man behind closed doors, which is why his death shocked people.
- Rodney Dangerfield
Star of 'Back to School', mentioned when Colin recalls the Kurt Vonnegut cameo.
- Roland
Tyler's former coworker, whom he calls one of the smartest people he has ever met. Tyler confided his first impression of Tamir to Roland, and learned the practice of monthly roommate…
- Ronald Reagan
Mentioned via the 'Just Say No' campaign and government drug propaganda that stigmatized psychedelics.
- Ronaldinho
Former Brazilian soccer star remembered for always smiling and playing for fun, even as his team was being knocked out of the World Cup. Tamir compares Sheela's lightness and joy to him.
- Rudyard Kipling
Author of the poem 'If—', which Tamir quotes on treating triumph and disaster as impostors.
- Ryan Holiday
Tamir saw him speak in Vancouver a few weeks earlier, where Holiday told the story of a philosopher asking the Oracle of Delphi about wisdom and being told to converse with the dead…
S
- Salih Yayar
German Murakami devotee (a self-described 'Murakamian') from Gütersloh who runs the Haruki Murakami Art YouTube and Instagram channels (mini-documentaries visualizing Murakami's books)…
- Samantha Chung
Life coach, mindset and manifestation expert and podcast host (Simplifying Sam) who does what she calls 'thought work', helping clients see the imagined walls that block them. Tamir met her…
- Seneca
Cited as a Stoic whose life was riddled with tragedy (killed by Nero, family deaths) and who wrote consolation letters, including one to his mother from exile.
- Sheela's mother
Mother of six children whom Sheela never once saw with a serious face; Sheela says her own joyful disposition comes from her. It was a visit to her mother after an eye operation that…
- Shel Silverstein
Logan answered the Kafka quote with Silverstein's poem 'Masks'. Tamir reads it on air.
- Sherlock Holmes
Mia's image for the griever who shifts from mourner to investigator, wanting to know everything about the lost person or why they left.
- Sigmund Freud
Tamir (unsure of exact wording) attributes to Freud the idea that neurosis comes from ambiguity, linking it to our panic in the face of uncertainty.
- Sigrid Löffler
Long-time host of the German TV show Das Literarische Quartett who called the sex passages in South of the Border, West of the Sun 'fast food' writing, was accused of prudishness by her…
- Sogyal Rinpoche
Author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which Mia uses in her grief work.
- Sophie Kinsella
Author of Confessions of a Shopaholic, which Tyler cites jokingly to say that any book, highbrow or not, introduces you to other worlds.
- Sophocles
- Stanisław Lem
Author of the novel Solaris, which Tamir asks Grant about.
- Stephen Covey
Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, mentioned by Tyler alongside Carnegie as a classic he skimmed in his 30s.
- Stephen King
Grant calls Murakami 'the Stephen King of Japanese literature': prolific, light and popular.
- Swami Sarvapriyananda
Likely the speaker of the cold-open clip about a lion in a dream: inside the dream there's no logical answer to where the lion came from, because the real answer is to wake up. The clip…
- Sylvia Plath
American poet and novelist. Tamir reads her fig tree passage from The Bell Jar to frame the episode's question of how to step toward one of many unknowns without being paralyzed.
- Søren Kierkegaard
Danish philosopher. Tamir brings up his line that life is understood backwards but lived forwards, which he says Recursion also quotes, to show why we can never know in advance whether we…
T
- Tamir Barzilai
Host of the Nectar of Time podcast; in this second official episode he shares his own path back into fiction via a pandemic book club and Haruki Murakami.
- the forbidden wonderland of murakami
- The Godfathers
- The Wachowskis
- Thomas Edison
Comes up as one of Napoleon Hill's mentors in Think and Grow Rich, and as the possible source (with Tesla) of the advice never to go to sleep without making a request of your subconscious.
- Tim Ferriss
Mia cites him as someone with a cerebral, self-improvement fan base who still loves and honors fiction and comic books.
- Tom Holland
Actor who, as Tamir remembers it, said he would play Spider-Man and marry Zendaya. Tamir uses him as an example of manifestation stories that may reflect survivor bias.
- Tony Robbins
The main book in Colin's five-self-help-books experiment. One of his salespeople said Robbins had changed his life while still performing badly at sales.
- Tyler Dorchester
Tamir's barber of seven years and close friend; a deep reader of fiction, a published comic artist and a writer of unpublished short stories, raised on a farm in rural Alberta. Tamir calls…
U
- Ubisoft
- UK TikTok mobility coach
Unnamed man on TikTok in the UK who helps children with cerebral palsy or brain injuries take a couple of steps. He uses swearing, no-kid-gloves encouragement, and makes them feel that two…
- Unidentified narrator
- Ursula K. Le Guin
American science-fiction and fantasy writer, author of The Lathe of Heaven, read at the top of the episode (transcribed as 'Ursula kwinn' / 'Kaya Gwinn').
V
- Valmiki
Traditional author of the Ramayana, which Tamir lists among the spiritual classics he read.
- Various (Vedic sages)
- Vedantic tradition
- Viktor Frankl
Author of Man's Search for Meaning. Brought up as a non-fiction source on controlling only your response to circumstance; for Tyler, Frankl taught the same lesson as dark fiction: finding…
- Vladimir Putin
Colin's example of 'pretentious nonsense': sitting at one end of a long table with his generals at the far end to project omnipotence.
- Vyasa (traditionally attributed)
W
- Walter Isaacson
Mia pushes back on the idea that his biographies of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are more serious than Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.
- William Ernest Henley
Author of 'Invictus', whose closing lines Tamir quotes as another source of the kind of wisdom Sheela embodies.
- William Faulkner
Author of Absalom, Absalom!, read in Grant's university class.
- William Shakespeare
Mentioned in passing: asking an LLM to write an essay on Shakespeare is Tamir's example of a model predicting the best possible output.
- Woody Allen
Colin quotes his line that 80% of success is just showing up. Tamir adds that being physically present doesn't mean you've actually shown up.
Y
- Yann Martel
Montreal-raised author of Life of Pi; Grant recounts his interview about carrying readers further step by step into the fantastic.
- Yu Miri
Japanese-Korean author of Tokyo Ueno Station, which Tamir reads from as a meditation on grief.
- Yukio Mishima
Japanese novelist and Dazai's rival; Grant recalls a story that Mishima was dismissive of Dazai as a human being.
Z
- ZDF
- Zendaya
Actor, mentioned in the Tom Holland manifestation example.
- Zeno of Citium
Founder of Stoicism, who in the traditional story was told by the oracle to 'take on the complexion of the dead', which he read as studying ancient authors. Tamir tells the story via Ryan…
- Zoe
Tamir's artist friend who painted a mural for his studio while listening to the 1Q84 audiobook, complete with glow-in-the-dark two moons; an upcoming guest for an episode on 1Q84 and art.
- Zoltán
A bartender friend of Grant's in Budapest who sincerely believes RoboCop is the best film ever made and argued it for four hours.