Talking Books

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character  is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life. The anecdotes in the book are based on recorded audio conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton.

Jordan Peterson discusses his reasons for writing self-help books, his goal being to provide a case for why certain axiomatic propositional statements were not simple or obvious, while also creating a thorough process to help others understand these ideas. Peterson emphasizes the importance of finding meaning and leading a practical, actionable life, and the difficulty of maintaining order in one&...

In 2017, several of my close friends died in rapid succession. It was a very hard year, as it was for many people. It was also a stark reminder that time is our scarcest, non-renewable resource. With a renewed sense of urgency, I began asking myself many questions: Were my goals my own, or simply what I thought I should want? How much of life had I missed from underplanning or overplanning? How co...

Graham Weaver, Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Founder of Alpine Investors, shares the three most important principles for living a full life as part of the GSB 2024 Last Lecture Series. Hint: It involves discovering the power of your second voice.

The seven rules to follow to realise your true purpose in life-distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone. The world's greatest bodybuilder. The world's highest paid movie star. The leader of the world's sixth largest economy. That these are the same person sounds like the setup to...

The seven rules to follow to realise your true purpose in life-distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone. The world's greatest bodybuilder. The world's highest paid movie star. The leader of the world's sixth largest economy. That these are the same person sounds like the setup to...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind  (Hebrew: קיצור תולדות האנושות,  Qitzur Toldot ha-Enoshut ) is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2014. The book, focusing on Homo sapiens, surveys the history of humankind, starting from the Stone Age and going up to the t...

The giant characters of history - from Mozart to Michelangelo, Shakespeare to Einstein, Henry VIII to Hitler, Catherine the Great to Margaret Thatcher, Jesus Christ to Genghis Khan ­- lived lives of astonishing drama and adventure, debauchery and slaughter, but they also formed our world and will shape our future. In this eclectic and surprising collection of short and entertaining life stories, S...

In this fascinating and often hilarious work – winner of the Royal Society of Science Prize 2007 – pre-eminent psychologist Daniel Gilbert shows how – and why – the majority of us have no idea how to make ourselves happy. We all want to be happy, but do we know how? When it comes to improving tomorrow at the expense of today, we're terrible at predicting how to please our future selves. In ‘St...

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising ro...

(1:44) The podcast's impact on the besties (3:04) Future of AI, return potential (13:27) Why the besties play poker (16:37) Most impactful advice they've ever received (24:33) Happy Birthday Friedberg!

I asked him how much it would take for him to sell FTX and go do something other than make money. He thought the question over. "One hundred and fifty billion dollars," he finally said-though he added that he had use for "infinity dollars"...' Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't just rich. Before he turned thirty he'd become the world's youngest billionaire, making a recor...

Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? Emperor of Rome  goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an accoun...

In the Cambridge Union debate between entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel, questions arose about his political stance regarding the upcoming presidential elections and the possibility of Donald Trump selecting JD Vance as his vice presidential candidate.  Thiel also discussed the challenges facing biotech startups, the importance of asking unpopular questions, and the potential impact of AI on s...

We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master sel...

Epic feats. Epic failures. An epic story. Walter Isaacson charts Elon Musk’s journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet – but is Musk a genius or a jerk?   From the author of  Steve Jobs  and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era – a rule-breaking visionary...

The Pax Romana has long been revered as a golden age. At its peak, the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to Arabia, and contained perhaps a quarter of humanity. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state the world had yet seen. Beginning in 69AD, a year that saw four Caesars in succession rule the empire, and ending some seven decades later with the death of Hadrian,  Pax  presents a dazzl...

Niall Ferguson, the celebrated historian who predicted Cold War II in 2018, has assembled the sharpest minds from both sides of the Bamboo Curtain for a discussion on the future of U.S.-China relations. David Daokui Li Andrew Erickson Niall Ferguson Keyu Jin Matt Pottinger

Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis? Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character  is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life. The anecdotes in the book are based on recorded audio conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton.

Peter Thiel has made no secret of his feelings about economic and cultural issues. Hear him discuss his vision for the future, his bets on AI and digital currencies, his thoughts on the state of America — and why he’s staying out of the 2024 U.S. presidential election (for now).

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character  is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life. The anecdotes in the book are based on recorded audio conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character  is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life. The anecdotes in the book are based on recorded audio conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character  is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life. The anecdotes in the book are based on recorded audio conversations that Feynman had with his close friend and drumming partner Ralph Leighton.

( 0:00 ) New format: The All-In Interview! ( 0:59 ) Jonathan Haidt joins Jason and Friedberg: broader themes of his work, gamification and supercharged social media ( 12:39 ) Understanding how humans are wired from an evolutionary biology perspective ( 27:22 ) Haidt's proposals to help younger generations ( 33:12 ) Linking themes and trends in Haidt's books with recent college protests ( 4...