Reading and Listening

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested” — Francis Bacon.

I love reading books. Mostly for the joy of discovery and occasionally because I have to! For better or worse, my curiosity is far greater than my ability to retain information, and I read a lot more than I can remember. However, I am sure that these books have shaped my model of the world and myself. In no order, here is a list of most of what I have read as well as some of the podcasts I enjoy.

  • Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins
  • Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
  • The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
  • Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World by Tyler Cowen
  • Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
  • Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton
  • Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger
  • Kelly: More Than My Share Of It All by Clarence L “Kelly” Johnson
  • Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World’s Best Companies Are Learning from It by Brian Dumaine
  • Power of Now by Eckhart tolle
  • The Knowledge Machine : How irrationality created modern science by Micheal Strevens
  • The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger
  • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
  • Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
  • Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations by Johan Norberg
  • “Yes” or “No”: The Guide to Better Decisions by Spencer Johnson
  • How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity by Andrew Leigh
  • Limitless by Jim Kwik
  • Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
  • The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya
  • Read Your Mind by Oz Pearlman
  • Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West
  • The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
  • Isaac Newton by James Gleick
  • Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
  • The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
  • Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Elon Musk, The Innovators, The genius of innovations, Leonardo da Vinci all bu Walter Isaacson
  • Thinking in Systems: A primer by Donella Meadows
  • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • Contact by Carl Sagan
  • Atomic Habits by James Clear
  • Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
  • Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
  • Skip the Line by James Altucher
  • How to avoid a climate disaster by Bill Gates
  • The 4-hour Workweek, The 4-hour Chef by Tim Ferris
  • Deep Work, How to win at College by Cal Newport
  • The third wave: An entrepreneur’s vision of the future by Steve Case
  • Ultralearning by Scott.H.Young
  • Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
  • Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think Like A Freak all by Steven Levitt
  • Outliers, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Talking to Strangers, Revenge of the tipping point all by Malcolm Gladwell
  • AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu lee
  • The 50th law: by 50 cent and Robert greene
  • Sonny Boy: A Memoir by Al Pacino
  • Project Hail Mary, The Martian all by Andy Weir
  • The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, How Innovation Works all by Matt Ridley
  • Alchemy: The dark and art and curios science of creating magic in Brands, Life and business by Rory Sutherland
  • Contagious, The Catalyst, Invisible Influence all by Jonah Berger
  • The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality by Blake J Harris
  • E myth revisited by Michael. E. Gerber
  • How to Lead, How to Invest by David Rubenstein
  • Live Work Work Work Die: A journey into the savage heart of silicon valley by Corey Pein
  • Dollars and sense: how we misthink money and how to spend smarter by Dan Ariely
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • The Future is yours by Dan Frey
  • Good to Great by Jim Collins
  • A brief history of intelligence by Max Bennet
  • Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
  • Delta-V by Daniel Suarez
  • Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics by Thomas Gillespie
  • Tune to Win by Carroll Smith
  • Practical Augmented Reality by Steve Aukstakalnis
  • The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
  • Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
  • How to read a book by Mortimer Adler
  • The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World by David Eagleman
  • I contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
  • The Anthology of Balaji, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
  • The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving human Evolution by Joseph Henrich
  • Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
  • Principles, Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order, Big Debt Crises all by Ray Dalio
  • The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball
  • The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
  • Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
  • The Art of doing Science and Engineering by Richard W Hamming
  • The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger
  • The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby
  • On Writing by Stephen King
  • The Nvidia Way by Tae Kim
  • Build : An Unorthodox Guide To Making Things by Tony Fadell
  • How the world really works by Vaclav Smil
  • The Psychology of Money, Same as Ever all by Morgan Housel
  • Sapiens, Homo Deus, Nexus Yuval Noah Harari
  • The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
  • The Lessons of History, The Story of Philosophy, The Greatest Minds and Ideas by Will and Ariel Durant
  • The End is Always Near by Dan Carlin
  • Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design , 11th Edition – McGraw Hill
  • The Pattern on The Stone by Danny Hillis
  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
  • The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li
  • Elon Musk: Tesla, Spacex, And The Quest For A Fantastic Future, When the Heavens went on Sale by Ashlee Vance
  • Founders at Work : Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
  • When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
  • This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by John Brockman
  • The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
  • Creating things that Matter by David Edwards
  • Is God a Mathematician by Mario Livio
  • This is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee
  • The Ape that Understood the Universe by Steve Stewart-Williams
  • Psych: The story of the Human Mind by Paul Bloom
  • The Showman by Simon Shuster
  • Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
  • Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do MattersLink opens in new window by Brian Klaas
  • The Future by Naomi Alderman
  • The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates and The Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend by Rob Copeland
  • Making it So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart
  • Think Faster, Talk Smarter by Matt Abrahams
  • The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything by Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
  • The Things we Make by Bill Hammack
  • The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni
  • Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
  • Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life by Timothy J. Jorgensen
  • Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? by William Poundstone
  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  • Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson
  • Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley by Angel Au-Yeung
  • Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld
  • Behind the Cloud by Carlye Adler
  • Animal Farm, 1984 by George Orwell
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Seeing What Others Don’t by Gary Klein
  • Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
  • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by John Gertner
  • The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli
  • Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonald’s by Ray Croc
  • Small Is The New Big by Seth Godin
  • Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home by Benjamin Hall
  • Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World’s Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son by Lionel Barber
  • The Science of Storytelling, The Status Game by Will Storr
  • Without a Doubt by Surbi Sarna
  • Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg
  • Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Straight Shooter by Stephen A. Smith
  • The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People – and the Fight for Our Future by Alec Ross
  • Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better by Woo-Kyoung Ahn
  • Corruptible: Who gets power and how it changes us by Brian Klass
  • The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos
  • Never Finished: Unshackle your Mind and Win the War Within by David Goggins
  • How Minds Change by David McRaney
  • The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman
  • On Human Nature by Edward O Wilson
  • Creativity Code by Marcus du Sautoy
  • Mediations by Marcus Aurelius
  • The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise by David Kushner
  • The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts us all at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World by David Robert Grimes
  • After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul by Tripp Mickle
  • Red Roulette by Desmond Shum
  • Nudge Richard H. Thaler
  • On Writing Well by William Zinsser
  • Free Will, Lying all by Sam Harris
  • Endure by Cameron Hanes
  • Shoe Dog: A memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
  • Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness by Tim S. Grover
  • In the Plex, The Perfect Thing by Steven Levy
  • Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal
  • The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains Antony Lewis
  • Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
  • The Third Reich: A history of Nazi Germany by Thomas Childers
  • Maid by Stephanie Land
  • Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
  • How to be Better at Almost Everything by Pat Flynn
  • Barking up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker
  • Loonshots by Safi Bahcall
  • The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
  • The Innovator’s Dna by Clayton M. Christensen
  • Hit Refresh: A memoir by Microsoft’s CEO by Satya Nadella
  • The Creators Code by Amy Wilkinson
  • The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross
  • The Autobiography of Gucci Mane by Gucci Mane
  • Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta
  • Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian
  • Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car by Lawrence D Burns
  • The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla
  • Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez
  • The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
  • The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis
  • The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler
  • The Fourth Age by Byron Reese
  • Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab
  • What it Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence by Stephen A. Schwarzman
  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  • How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  • Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
  • Grit by Angela Duckworth
  • The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
  • Bull’s Eye: The Power of Focus, Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy
  • Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford
  • Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark

Podcasts are also fun, these are some of my favorites.

  • Lex Fridman Podcast
  • Dwarkesh Podcast
  • Conversations with Tyler
  • Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman
  • The Ben & Marc Show
  • Uncapped with Jack Altman
  • All-In Podcast
  • 20VC
  • Huberman Lab
  • The Rest is History
  • Dan Carlin’s Hardcore history
  • People I (mostly) Admire
  • Acquired
  • Nat’s Notes
  • The Tim Ferris show
  • Philosophize This!
  • Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin
  • Dialectic