What You Will Learn

Humans have been dreaming a long time about flying vehicles. In a famous IBM commercial, Avery Books asked: "it's the year 2000, but where are the flying cars?... I don't see them! Why!". Peter Thiel quips "we wanted flying cars and we got 140 characters". And today, the wait could finally be over. It looks like flying cars, alongside all sorts of pie in the sky innovations, are just around the co...

We've been doing a lot of dark books recently. Ordinary Men, The Prince and Collapse all paint a dim view of human nature. The idea goes that we have a thin veneer of niceness on the surface, but deep down we're all capable of pure evil. Thankfully, this book gives the opposite perspective. The simple idea of this book is that we're actually all pretty decent. Disasters and tough times don't cause...

A six year study looked at 'visionary companies' and tried to identify what set them apart from the rest of the herd. These visionary companies were the ones that were the premier of their industry, were widely admired by knowledgeable businesspeople, had been through multiple product life cycles and multiple generations of leadership. The 18 companies identified outperformed the stock market by 1...

Steve Glaveski is back for Round 2, this time talking about the launch of his new book Time Rich: Do Your Best Work, Live Your Best Life. This book helps us work smarter and live better. In this episode we discuss the past, present and future of work, and how time is a better measure than money. Make sure you stay tuned all the way to the end for a special musical treat! Check out Steve's new book...

The ultimate competitive advantage of successful organisations? Teamwork. A leader who can get their entire team rowing in the same direction can dominate any market in any industry. However, teamwork is as elusive as ever. Human beings are inherently dysfunctional. By acknowledging the imperfections of humans, members of functional teams can overcome our natural tendencies and work together towar...

Lydia Denworth is the author of three books, including the recently published Friendship: The Evolution, Biology and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond . In this interview, we chat with Lydia about the psychological impacts, evolutionary context and elements of a high-quality friendship. Lydia launched this book with perfect timing - just before a worldwide pandemic put friendships and...

Disclaimer: we are not psychologists or psychiatrists, or in anyway giving medical advice. Johann Hari was depressed as a young man. He was told a story about why he felt so down: that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. They say that the brains of depressed people have lower levels of serotonin (the happiness molecule). Then we’re told that Big Pharma has the answer. They’v...

We had the pleasure of speaking to one of the Godfathers of habits and designing behaviours, BJ Fogg. We love the simplicity of his model: "Behaviour = Motivation + Ability + Prompt". Through this lens, we can see exactly why we do (or don't do) the things we want to do! Following on from our own discussion of his book Tiny Habits , this interview dives a little deeper into the intricacies of inst...

We all want some kind of change. But for most of us, there is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do. If you have attempted to do something different in the past and haven't seen the results, you've probably figured out by now that change is hard. If you tried to put together a chest of drawers with faulty instructions and parts missing, you would feel frustrated. But you...

"The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick)" A great short book the explains why there's always a 'dip' in your projects on your journey to becoming the best in the world - be that getting a promotion, building a business, writing a book, falling in love... anything! At the start, as you put in more effort you'll see good results. Then, theres a dip. You'll put in more...

Your life is a constant stream of decisions: what career to follow, how to manage a business, whom to marry, how to bring up children, whether to run for president, how to communicate with a colleague and how to react when life slaps you in the face. The common element is that you are not in a vacuum. Instead, you are surrounded by the world that interacts with any decision you make. The context o...

Malcolm Gladwell is one of the biggest selling non-fiction authors of our generation, with smash-hits like Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point.  This book is a collection of his essays and newspaper articles. We picked some of our favourites, taking us on a deep dive into three important distinctions: The Arts of Failure, The Nature of Secrets, and Success in the Young and the Old. In...

When you buy a product, you can see it, touch it, and depending on the product you can taste/smell/hear it as well. Services, on the other hand, are intangible. There’s no exact clear definition of what you’re getting when you buy a service - you’re just purchasing what you hope the end result will be. Obviously services are different from products, so service marketing must be different from prod...

So much you want to learn, so little time to learn it. Every new skill has what Josh calls a "FRUSTRATION BARRIER". At first the basics of a new skill can seem fun. But then you hit a wall, a few hours in, where you don't seem to be improving and it is just getting frustrating. You're still horribly unskilled, but now painfully aware of it. Maybe you learned to play Three Blind Mice on the piano,...

"The Art of Happiness" - by HH Dalai Lama XIV & Howard C Cutler 'A Handbook for Living' Happy people have it a lot better than unhappy people. Studies show you're more likely to pick up a better mate, have more satisfying marriages, you're more likely to be a better parent, you'll have a better immune system and live an extra 10 years. It also leads to better mental resilience and ability to d...

We underestimate the role of randomness in just about everything. We often have the mistaken impression that a strategy is an excellent strategy, or an entrepreneur is a person endowed with unique vision. Nassim Taleb believes that the world is much more random than we think. Skills count, obviously. But they count much less in highly random environments like trading, than they do in the pred...

With Adam Jones turning 30 this week, we figured this was his last chance to work out what he’d done wrong (or right) during his 20s. The key message of this book is that your twenties MATTER. A lot of young people like to say that your twenties don’t matter, that you can put off life’s big decisions until later, that the 20s are the time for fun and enjoying life and not to be taken too seriously...

At the height of the Second World War, the German army had minimal resources to continue the war to the East with Russia, and simultaneously execute Hitler's "Final Solution". The Nazi party had already used up all of the ideological killers in their country. They were left with the dregs of society. They would have to use Joe the local Butcher, Jim the Primary School Teacher even Grandpa George t...

Despite evidence to the contrary, we all use our brains. BUT - most of us have never learned how to think effectively. We’re not talking about IQ or innate intelligence, we’re talking about thinking as a LEARNED SKILL. We’re talking about a productive method of thinking and reasoning. Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoons, author of How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big and...

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick introduced the world to their new discovery: the double-helix DNA structure. This so-called "secret of life" was widely considered the most important scientific discovery of the 20th Century. Their presentation won them a Nobel Prize. The most striking part of the pitch? It was only 5 minutes long. That was the COMPLETE presentation - introducing the secret...

We started the podcast back in June 2016. In the last four-and-a-quarter years, we've read and reviewed 200 books on the podcast! We thought it was a great milestone to take a step back and have a look at what lessons we've learned from all of the books we've read and how they can tie in together. A couple of years ago when we hit our 100th book, we did our "Top 10 Lessons". You can listen to that...

The identities of all of the most powerful people in the country are similar: they're white, male, middle and upper class, and able bodied. Acknowledging this may be dismissed as political correctness, but Robin Diangello notes it is still a fact. Those people in the seats of power are making decisions that affect those not sitting at the table. Identity politics gets a pretty bad wrap. But lookin...

Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" There are some great statisticians and data manipulators out there, and that can manoeuvre things in a way to get exactly the result they want. Any time you see a statistic, you should consider that it might be a lie. You need to learn some of these tricks so that you can defend yourself. The author says that the...

You and everyone you know is going to one day die. This is an uncomfortable fact. So uncomfortable that we try to push it out of our minds. But this leaves  most people totally unprepared for their meeting with the ‘Grim Reaper’.  Doctors learn a lot in medical school, but mortality isn't on the curriculum. The textbooks have almost nothing on ageing, frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how...

The Selfish Gene is one of the most influential books on Evolutionary Biology in history. Written by Richard Dawkins, the book shows us that we are just big lumbering robots whose purpose is to pass on genes. The gene itself sometimes generates selfish behaviour of the animal it inhabits. But it can also use altruistic behaviour, even sacrifice itself on the behalf of family who may share the same...