The 5 Books I Read in July 2022 | Deep Questions Podcast With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | Alright, speaking of books, the first episode we've recorded in the studio together since

00:00:06.200 | July ended.

00:00:08.960 | So let's go over the books I read in July 2022.

00:00:14.400 | As long time listeners know, I aim to read 5 books a month.

00:00:20.120 | So I will do these in order.

00:00:23.100 | The first book I read in July was From Zero to Maker by David Lang.

00:00:33.480 | I was in a DIY maker mood in June.

00:00:38.560 | I think I had read, if I'm remembering right, Adam Savage's The Mythbusters memoir about

00:00:45.620 | being a maker or whatever.

00:00:46.620 | So I was in that mindset.

00:00:47.620 | I read this book and it was about someone who left his office job or got fired from

00:00:53.460 | his office job, got really into being the DIY maker community and started a company

00:00:58.880 | about building DIY underwater ROV robots.

00:01:03.620 | And it was a book he wrote for Make Magazine's publishing imprint about how to become a maker.

00:01:11.020 | So I think it was a really interesting premise.

00:01:13.460 | The book didn't come together because it was partially memoir.

00:01:20.380 | That's kind of interesting, his story, but partially like, let me give you resources

00:01:27.580 | on being a maker.

00:01:28.580 | And so that mixed together, I think kind of let the steam out of the engine a little bit.

00:01:32.740 | But it was interesting.

00:01:33.740 | Some interesting case studies in there.

00:01:36.300 | All right, the next book I read was The Monster's Bones by David Randall.

00:01:45.180 | This is one of the big nonfiction releases I think of this summer.

00:01:48.220 | So it's a nonfiction book about the start of the American History Museum in New York

00:01:55.300 | and in particular the fight to get the first major dinosaur bone exhibits, like the complete

00:02:02.500 | dinosaur bones, in your museum.

00:02:06.500 | And getting the first tyrannosaur, I believe, is what really helped the American Museum

00:02:11.260 | of History in New York really take off.

00:02:13.300 | And it focuses on this really interesting character, actual name, Barnum Brown.

00:02:19.740 | This Kansas farm boy who is not from the sort of elite educated bastions that the big bone

00:02:29.340 | hunters were from, the Copes, the Osbournes, but he became like the world's best dinosaur

00:02:35.340 | bone hunter.

00:02:36.340 | He was just very good at it.

00:02:37.500 | So it really follows his story.

00:02:39.140 | He found the first like large, he found the first tyrannosaur and a couple other major

00:02:44.860 | first and he just was a natural born bone hunter.

00:02:48.340 | And it sort of follows him and the story of all these museums trying to hunt down these

00:02:51.860 | bones.

00:02:52.860 | It was pretty good.

00:02:53.860 | Good book.

00:02:56.180 | Then I read, I don't know, yeah, I don't know what fool gave this book to me, but I read

00:03:00.940 | a man for all markets about Edward Thorpe.

00:03:05.300 | This came from Jesse, who thought I would like it.

00:03:07.700 | I did.

00:03:08.700 | Edward Thorpe's an interesting guy.

00:03:10.340 | So it's the memoir of Edward Thorpe.

00:03:12.820 | He was a mathematics professor who then left academia, start basically like a quantitative

00:03:19.780 | hedge fund, but also like a lot of interesting things.

00:03:22.220 | I mean, here's, here's the right way to summarize this guy.

00:03:25.060 | He's still alive, but he's in his like upper eighties right now.

00:03:27.660 | Right.

00:03:28.660 | There's a period in this book where he's in Reno with Claude Shannon and a minute, one

00:03:37.260 | of the first miniaturized computers to ever be built that they're using to time the roulette

00:03:42.980 | wheel and make money with a gambling, gambling system.

00:03:47.580 | It's like an interesting guy.

00:03:49.500 | Like he's just interested in he wrote a book called beat the dealer famously in the sixties

00:03:53.860 | where it's the first time someone had really used a computing power to actually run through

00:03:59.260 | and calculate the win probabilities of different strategies against blackjack.

00:04:03.260 | And he figured out if you do the right type of what's the optimal strategy without card

00:04:07.580 | counting the dealer, she'll have an advantage.

00:04:10.460 | And then with card counting, what the optimal strategies are.

00:04:13.140 | He ran this all punch card programs through computers and figured out like, yeah, you

00:04:17.340 | could, you could have an edge on the casino with these systems.

00:04:21.020 | Right.

00:04:22.020 | So that's another thing he got into.

00:04:23.700 | Then he realized at some point that wall street was like a much more interesting casino and

00:04:27.860 | they couldn't kick you out just because they didn't like you were winning too much.

00:04:31.580 | And so then he went there and he made a lot of money in wall street.

00:04:34.020 | They were, he was early to sort of hedging strategies.

00:04:38.700 | He figured out early a, a version of basically the black souls derivative pricing formula,

00:04:44.780 | which one black and shows a Nobel prize.

00:04:47.660 | He didn't prove that his formula was right.

00:04:49.560 | That mathematics is very hard.

00:04:50.780 | That's kind of what they want, that microeconomics Nobel prize for, but he sort of figured out

00:04:54.540 | the formula.

00:04:55.540 | Like, I think this more or less is correct.

00:04:57.180 | And so it made a lot of money trading.

00:04:59.140 | So interesting guy.

00:05:00.760 | He was unfair twice in like the last several months.

00:05:04.340 | So that's where you found him, right?

00:05:05.340 | Was Paris.

00:05:06.340 | Yeah.

00:05:07.340 | Yeah.

00:05:08.340 | So I listened to him and like, when I first started listening to the first episode, he

00:05:10.740 | was just like talking about working out and I was like, Oh, this guy's kind of cool.

00:05:13.260 | And then I found out he was like 88 years old and I was like this guy's.

00:05:16.900 | So then I started looking into him more.

00:05:18.720 | So what do you think about this, Jesse?

00:05:20.580 | Like one thing I came away with is like the writing between the lines in this book is

00:05:26.580 | I don't know if he's frustrated about this.

00:05:29.500 | He's obviously like a brilliant guy, but there's, there's all these areas where he was sort

00:05:34.780 | of early to something.

00:05:36.400 | This comes up again and again in the book, he was early to something that eventually

00:05:40.980 | became major, like one, someone, a Nobel prize, innovated a whole field or whatever.

00:05:46.020 | And he would always get to the point where, okay, I more or less know what's going on

00:05:49.560 | here and then moves on.

00:05:52.320 | And then someone would come in later and sort of do the work more thoroughly and become

00:05:56.680 | very famous.

00:05:57.680 | And then someone will come in here.

00:05:58.760 | So like he had these kinds of breakthroughs in economics, but never really pushed them

00:06:01.960 | through other people did and became world famous economist, had these breakthroughs

00:06:06.980 | and how to run hedge funds, made himself, you know, millions of dollars, but he's defensive

00:06:14.400 | about, he was never a billion dollar hedge fund.

00:06:16.840 | He was never one of the big guys, like the guys who swung in and like leveraged up and

00:06:21.760 | pushed these ideas and, and, and made the huge money.

00:06:25.760 | So it's like an interesting.

00:06:26.760 | Yeah.

00:06:27.760 | The one thing that happened to his fund was there was a little bit of trouble with that

00:06:33.840 | guy in New Jersey.

00:06:35.100 | So they had to close it down.

00:06:36.560 | Yeah.

00:06:37.560 | So I think if that didn't happen, who knows what, but also he'd never seemed interested

00:06:40.320 | in world conquering.

00:06:42.920 | Yeah.

00:06:43.920 | I think he wanted to hang out with his family and his wife and he wanted to work out and

00:06:47.600 | do interesting stuff.

00:06:48.600 | Yeah.

00:06:49.600 | Like, it's kind of like a deep life.

00:06:50.600 | That's what I'm thinking.

00:06:51.600 | So I think he's like a great, he's an interesting case study for different models of the deep

00:06:54.560 | life.

00:06:55.560 | And like, I think he's someone that was definitely thinking I've got this asset, which is this

00:07:00.360 | high octane brain.

00:07:01.360 | Cause he's just like wanders into these areas and does like good work.

00:07:07.000 | And he said, okay, I have two options here.

00:07:09.000 | I could go all in with this brain on something.

00:07:13.000 | I think for him it could be essentially like make a run for a Nobel type thing or whatever,

00:07:18.360 | like getting an endowed chair at U Chicago or something like really like being a big

00:07:22.960 | guy in economics.

00:07:24.440 | Or he could have gone all in and be like, I want to be, you know, I want billion plus

00:07:30.160 | net worth.

00:07:31.160 | Like both of those things were probably on the table for him.

00:07:32.760 | And he said, instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take advantage of this brain,

00:07:35.440 | which means I can, I can come in and out of a lot of things, like make enough money to

00:07:40.600 | be comfortable, explore, do interesting things, have control over my time.

00:07:45.200 | And that's the route he went.

00:07:46.800 | And I think you're right to put out the deep life, because if you're looking at the buckets

00:07:49.840 | of the deep life and trying to think through, how am I going to service all of these buckets?

00:07:54.000 | It's not a bad strategy if you're super smart.

00:07:56.720 | It's like, how can I use this to, to really have a lot of autonomy?

00:08:01.600 | Don't worry about money, but also be able to, he got really into working out, surfing,

00:08:06.480 | like all these different things.

00:08:07.480 | I can come in and out of opportunities.

00:08:08.880 | I can shut things down, do nothing for a few years.

00:08:10.840 | They got really into charitable giving.

00:08:14.040 | I think initially when he was first, you know, after he got his doctorate, he was, because

00:08:18.600 | he mentions in the book, he didn't have a ton of money.

00:08:20.680 | So then he made some money off the publishing the book.

00:08:24.400 | And then I think once he started making it, he started making it pretty decent.

00:08:29.040 | And then he realized he was probably set, you know?

00:08:31.680 | Yeah.

00:08:32.680 | And definitely the stock stuff too.

00:08:33.680 | Yeah.

00:08:34.680 | And the stock stuff made him millions.

00:08:36.040 | Yeah.

00:08:38.040 | But in the period of time where he was like looking at where to go.

00:08:40.400 | Like he was a good professor, not a great professor.

00:08:42.200 | Like everything there was this, everything he did was competitive fields where he was

00:08:46.320 | good, not great, but he moved through a lot of the fields.

00:08:48.480 | Like he wasn't at a top economics department, but actually was doing cool applied math work,

00:08:51.960 | but then left.

00:08:54.040 | He wasn't one of the big, you know, hedge fund guys.

00:08:58.600 | It's New York when buying a hundred million dollar, whatever.

00:09:02.360 | But he did well in the hedge funds.

00:09:04.440 | He like did well in the gambling.

00:09:06.600 | So I like it.

00:09:07.720 | I know why you recommended it.

00:09:09.520 | And I think it's like, he's not just interesting, but it's a nice case study of being incredibly

00:09:13.920 | intentional about, I have this asset let's build.

00:09:17.640 | I think he built a really interesting life.

00:09:19.160 | Yeah.

00:09:20.160 | He has a lot of like good practical advice too.

00:09:21.560 | Like on his interview with Tim, just about, he's even talking about just like personal

00:09:26.760 | investments, like risk-taking, I guess, a human stuff like that.

00:09:30.320 | Yeah.

00:09:31.320 | So yeah, definitely listen to the interviews as well.

00:09:32.440 | All right.

00:09:33.440 | So then I also, I listened to this one actually, Dilettante by Dana Brown.

00:09:40.160 | That's a memoir.

00:09:41.160 | It's, it's, it's like the devil wears Prada, but written by the assistant to Graydon Carter

00:09:49.000 | at Vanity Fair.

00:09:50.000 | It's like a male devil's wear product.

00:09:54.040 | It was okay.

00:09:55.040 | Like, so Dana Brown, at least the way he tells the story is that he was bartending in the

00:10:01.720 | village, not really going anywhere.

00:10:05.880 | And for various random reasons, ends up an assistant to the, the new sort of hotshot

00:10:13.080 | splashy head of Vanity Fair in the nineties when magazine publishing was like the powerful

00:10:19.120 | thing in media.

00:10:20.120 | And he kind of works his way up and he ended up a deputy editor at Vanity Fair.

00:10:23.320 | So it's kind of interesting to hear the stories.

00:10:24.720 | I mean, I think the issue, it was good.

00:10:27.360 | I think it was interesting.

00:10:28.360 | You get an insight into what Condé Nast, Condé Nast was like in the nineties when

00:10:34.360 | it was the most, one of the most powerful because magazines were so profitable pre-internet,

00:10:39.280 | but right pre-internet and to be at one of their flagship publications, this, the, the,

00:10:43.160 | the money, the expense accounts, the, and so it was kind of cool to get into that world.

00:10:47.680 | Dana Brown stories like kind of interesting.

00:10:50.920 | Implicit he doesn't really make this very, he's not really clear about it, but it's kind

00:10:54.240 | of obvious that he got hired in part because this guy has like model, good looks.

00:10:58.360 | Like he was a model and like, I think he was like a very attractive guy and it was part

00:11:01.960 | of the, the, the scene they wanted to paint.

00:11:04.320 | And then he was just incredibly hardworking and sort of, sort of worked his way up, but

00:11:08.800 | it's not what he was doing is not that interesting.

00:11:11.040 | So the stories he was trying to spin, it's like, yeah, it's just a hard job.

00:11:13.720 | Like you gotta go to the, you have to go to all these events and work the door at the

00:11:16.880 | Oscar party and, and run stuff around town.

00:11:19.960 | And I think that the interesting thing to me was just hearing about all that was going

00:11:24.120 | on with magazine publishing.

00:11:26.560 | You know, I have to do, I have to do a lot of Conde Nast online trainings because, because

00:11:35.280 | I'm a contributor at the New Yorker.

00:11:37.520 | I have a newyorker.com email address, which I don't use, but I have a newyorker.com email

00:11:41.560 | address and they're owned by Conde Nast and they just have these rules, a giant company.

00:11:46.720 | So they just have these rules, like everyone who has a newyorker.com email address has

00:11:49.920 | to do all these like cybersecurity training.

00:11:52.760 | So I do like a non-trivial number of like watching the videos about how not to get catfished.

00:11:58.160 | And it's like my only intersection with corporate life.

00:12:03.240 | I know university life is its own thing, but that's its own little weird system.

00:12:06.200 | My only intersection with, you know, big company, corporate, the it department needs you to

00:12:11.880 | do trainings is that newyorker.com email address.

00:12:15.480 | So, and because I don't use the address, I don't get the message.

00:12:20.140 | So what happens is I don't realize that there's these like increasingly urgent series of messages.

00:12:25.120 | It's like you're over, you have to do your training.

00:12:27.120 | You don't like, why everyone has to do this?

00:12:29.240 | Like this is a problem getting yelled at because it gets escalated up.

00:12:31.600 | I think it gets escalated up.

00:12:33.200 | Yeah.

00:12:34.200 | Until it finally gets pretty high.

00:12:35.880 | And then eventually at some point someone will just, who knows me will email me directly

00:12:39.960 | to like my actual address.

00:12:40.960 | Like you got to do these trainings, you got to do these trainings.

00:12:43.000 | Like we're getting yelled at by the ghost of Cy Hirst.

00:12:46.240 | You know, anyways, it's funny.

00:12:48.040 | So that's, that's my dose of, of corporateness.

00:12:50.480 | All right.

00:12:51.960 | The last book I read, this was just random.

00:12:54.120 | Uh, and I'll give you the backstory, the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

00:13:01.160 | I read this book.

00:13:02.160 | Do you know this book?

00:13:03.160 | Somebody was talking about it.

00:13:05.040 | Is either you or Rogan talks about it.

00:13:07.800 | Yeah.

00:13:08.800 | Yeah.

00:13:09.800 | So this is like, as of this week, it came on 1997.

00:13:13.880 | I just checked before we recorded number four on Amazon charts.

00:13:18.920 | Maybe holiday gifted it to Rogan when he went on the show recently, he gave him a bunch

00:13:23.360 | of books at the end.

00:13:24.360 | I didn't get to the end of Ryan's interview.

00:13:26.960 | He gave him like 12 books.

00:13:28.800 | I think this might've been one of them.

00:13:30.680 | Well, he owns a bookstore.

00:13:31.960 | So, so anyways, I was just curious.

00:13:34.200 | I was like, this, why is this book from the nineties, you know, decades later, like top

00:13:41.160 | four, top five of like everything's selling on Amazon.

00:13:44.160 | So I went and read it.

00:13:45.160 | I don't know that I got an answer from reading it.

00:13:47.440 | It's short.

00:13:49.120 | It's for the four agreements, like four like agreements you should make with yourself.

00:13:54.160 | And they're like good life advice, you know, like be honest and don't care about what other

00:14:02.280 | people think.

00:14:03.280 | It's like four things like that.

00:14:04.280 | Just like standard advice.

00:14:07.160 | Number four came out in 1997.

00:14:09.400 | There's like some interesting this to it.

00:14:11.600 | Like, so the guy is claiming like, there's this whole claim up front that this is, this

00:14:15.240 | is wisdom from like the Olmecs is sort of a lost ancient central American civilization.

00:14:21.240 | And then he's like, I've, it's been passed through oral tradition.

00:14:25.280 | I've kind of captured it.

00:14:26.480 | He sets that up early on, but then the rest of the book is just standard, you know, self-help

00:14:32.360 | like you should be honest.

00:14:33.640 | It's here's why, like, it's, you don't want to get caught.

00:14:35.400 | Like it's not like throughout he's like really pulling from an exotic wisdom tradition or

00:14:39.840 | whatever.

00:14:40.840 | So I don't know what it's just somehow this hit it's good advice.

00:14:43.080 | I don't know.

00:14:44.080 | I have heard Rogan talk about is like my whole life is built on it.

00:14:46.480 | And maybe that's why, maybe that's why it's number four, because I guess it's that guy

00:14:51.080 | was saying you should read this.

00:14:53.000 | Probably.

00:14:54.000 | Yeah.

00:14:55.000 | So, so I don't know, but here's my quiz.

00:14:57.000 | All right.

00:14:58.000 | So then I looked up because I was looking this up.

00:15:00.000 | So I wrote down the top five as of this moment, the top five books this week on Amazon charts.

00:15:08.160 | Are you looking at it right now?

00:15:09.160 | I'm looking at it.

00:15:10.160 | I was going to quiz you.

00:15:11.160 | I was going to quiz you because to be on the Amazon charts, it's not like momentarily.

00:15:15.320 | Are you number one?

00:15:16.520 | It's like the volume of books sold this week, number one volume, which it could be different

00:15:21.240 | than because, uh, different books will trade places in the number one spot just because,

00:15:27.520 | you know, oh, in the last hour or something happened.

00:15:29.560 | Now I'm temporarily number one and then I disappear and someone else gets it, but the

00:15:32.400 | Amazon charts, but yeah, so top five, you see it right there.

00:15:36.280 | Number one, atomic habits.

00:15:38.080 | That book just kills it, huh?

00:15:40.080 | Just kills it.

00:15:41.080 | Just absolutely, absolutely kills it.

00:15:45.440 | Has he written any other ones yet?

00:15:47.080 | No, he was working on one.

00:15:49.640 | He told me, he told me about what he was working on.

00:15:51.440 | This was like a little while ago and the one year anniversary of atomic habits.

00:15:57.880 | I did a interview with him or he interviewed me for a, like he was doing a bunch of videos

00:16:04.080 | to celebrate the one year anniversary.

00:16:06.280 | And then afterwards he was telling me about what he was working on.

00:16:08.480 | I don't remember the idea.

00:16:09.480 | All I remember was thinking the moment like, oh, that's good.

00:16:12.600 | So he's got a good one waiting, but why would you rush it?

00:16:15.600 | Number one on Amazon charts.

00:16:18.640 | I mean, you're like, look, I don't know if this is the conversation he's happening, but

00:16:21.560 | I'll tell him the comp, I'll tell you the conversation his publisher is probably having

00:16:24.480 | with them.

00:16:25.980 | This is working.

00:16:26.980 | Like, why do you want to cannibalize sales from yourself?

00:16:29.480 | If you're literally the number one selling book on Amazon right now, let that play out,

00:16:35.520 | you know, because think about it.

00:16:36.520 | If clear came out with a followup book, you, it wouldn't just be, okay, now we have all

00:16:42.200 | of those sales plus all the atomic habits.

00:16:43.600 | It would probably cannibalize like you say, oh, I'm not going to get atomic habits.

00:16:47.000 | I'll get this new one or whatever.

00:16:48.200 | So I'm sure they're saying, what would you do if you were in that position?

00:16:52.600 | I'd let it, I'd let that, don't you really like writing?

00:16:55.160 | That's true.

00:16:56.160 | I don't know.

00:16:57.160 | I don't know.

00:16:58.160 | I feel like you would.

00:16:59.160 | I think it's a, I think it's a really weird position to be in.

00:17:00.160 | It's like not a bad position because you get a lot of money and, but it's a weird position.

00:17:04.880 | If a book takes off like that, it's like if you're the actor who really likes acting and

00:17:09.160 | then in the nineties, like at the height of that, and you just have like a huge surprise

00:17:13.040 | blockbuster it's the, uh, like what it really changes things.

00:17:16.400 | I guess you could just write more articles.

00:17:18.080 | Yeah.

00:17:19.080 | I think it would be complicated.

00:17:20.080 | Like if, if, if I had like an atomic habit style hit, it really complicates things.

00:17:25.320 | Well, it's funny.

00:17:26.320 | Cause I listened to like a lot of, I rehashed a lot of things like doing the YouTube channel

00:17:30.280 | and stuff.

00:17:31.280 | So I hear what you say like four different times and you always talk about how like writing

00:17:35.640 | is like the top priority.

00:17:38.560 | So it's all I'm doing right now.

00:17:40.120 | Yeah.

00:17:41.120 | And it's like summertime, just got an, I'm writing, writing, writing.

00:17:42.120 | What would you do in the mornings?

00:17:43.120 | Row?

00:17:44.120 | Just be like a beast on the rowing machine.

00:17:49.040 | Any arms and a huge back?

00:17:51.160 | Uh, I don't know.

00:17:52.520 | That's a good question.

00:17:53.520 | That's a good question.

00:17:54.520 | I don't, I mean, I don't know, uh, James clear well, but it's not like he was a book, right?

00:18:00.360 | He was, he had his own thing going on and then he wrote a book.

00:18:03.240 | So I don't know if it's not like his main thing is book writing.

00:18:06.060 | So it's probably a different, different equation.

00:18:08.080 | No, I think that's right.

00:18:09.360 | I think Mark Manson had this issue too, after subtle art and he, and he want to go do other

00:18:14.080 | things and they're like, we have to maximize blah, blah, blah.

00:18:18.240 | And he was like, screw you.

00:18:19.240 | He's like, I want to write.

00:18:21.000 | I think he's a guy who just wants to write.

00:18:23.600 | And at some point it was like, I'm just going to write.

00:18:25.640 | All right.

00:18:27.160 | Number two is the body keeps score.

00:18:30.160 | I think Oprah's involved in that, right?

00:18:32.040 | So that's like the least surprising.

00:18:34.700 | Number three is Lisa price.

00:18:35.700 | The body keeps score.

00:18:37.480 | Julie writers.

00:18:38.480 | She was telling me about, it's about trauma and from like a scientific standpoint, like,

00:18:44.360 | you know, the science of trauma and how it affects people.

00:18:46.760 | And I, and I know Oprah's heavily involved in it somehow.

00:18:49.120 | So of course, number two, it makes sense.

00:18:50.620 | Number three, green lights, Matt McConaughey.

00:18:52.120 | It makes sense.

00:18:53.600 | Right.

00:18:54.600 | I mean, he's like an interesting, famous guy.

00:18:58.120 | There's this, it's a weird book.

00:18:59.680 | I don't know.

00:19:00.680 | It's kind of weird.

00:19:01.680 | Right.

00:19:02.680 | But there's Matthew McConaughey stories in it.

00:19:03.680 | And there's like wisdom that either sounds really wise or kind of weird, but that's a

00:19:06.920 | weird juxtaposition.

00:19:07.920 | There's like this interesting, famous guy writing something that's just not just a standard

00:19:13.400 | like celebrity memoir.

00:19:15.040 | Then four agreements is number four and a rich dad, poor dad's number five.

00:19:19.200 | Or said poor dad is don't have a salary.

00:19:23.520 | You should have assets to generate money.

00:19:25.000 | There you go.

00:19:27.040 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:19:30.400 | (upbeat music)

The 5 Books I Read in July 2022 | Deep Questions Podcast With Cal Newport

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