Alright, speaking of books, the first episode we've recorded in the studio together since July ended. So let's go over the books I read in July 2022. As long time listeners know, I aim to read 5 books a month. So I will do these in order. The first book I read in July was From Zero to Maker by David Lang.

I was in a DIY maker mood in June. I think I had read, if I'm remembering right, Adam Savage's The Mythbusters memoir about being a maker or whatever. So I was in that mindset. I read this book and it was about someone who left his office job or got fired from his office job, got really into being the DIY maker community and started a company about building DIY underwater ROV robots.

And it was a book he wrote for Make Magazine's publishing imprint about how to become a maker. So I think it was a really interesting premise. The book didn't come together because it was partially memoir. That's kind of interesting, his story, but partially like, let me give you resources on being a maker.

And so that mixed together, I think kind of let the steam out of the engine a little bit. But it was interesting. Some interesting case studies in there. All right, the next book I read was The Monster's Bones by David Randall. This is one of the big nonfiction releases I think of this summer.

So it's a nonfiction book about the start of the American History Museum in New York and in particular the fight to get the first major dinosaur bone exhibits, like the complete dinosaur bones, in your museum. And getting the first tyrannosaur, I believe, is what really helped the American Museum of History in New York really take off.

And it focuses on this really interesting character, actual name, Barnum Brown. This Kansas farm boy who is not from the sort of elite educated bastions that the big bone hunters were from, the Copes, the Osbournes, but he became like the world's best dinosaur bone hunter. He was just very good at it.

So it really follows his story. He found the first like large, he found the first tyrannosaur and a couple other major first and he just was a natural born bone hunter. And it sort of follows him and the story of all these museums trying to hunt down these bones.

It was pretty good. Good book. Then I read, I don't know, yeah, I don't know what fool gave this book to me, but I read a man for all markets about Edward Thorpe. This came from Jesse, who thought I would like it. I did. Edward Thorpe's an interesting guy.

So it's the memoir of Edward Thorpe. He was a mathematics professor who then left academia, start basically like a quantitative hedge fund, but also like a lot of interesting things. I mean, here's, here's the right way to summarize this guy. He's still alive, but he's in his like upper eighties right now.

Right. There's a period in this book where he's in Reno with Claude Shannon and a minute, one of the first miniaturized computers to ever be built that they're using to time the roulette wheel and make money with a gambling, gambling system. It's like an interesting guy. Like he's just interested in he wrote a book called beat the dealer famously in the sixties where it's the first time someone had really used a computing power to actually run through and calculate the win probabilities of different strategies against blackjack.

And he figured out if you do the right type of what's the optimal strategy without card counting the dealer, she'll have an advantage. And then with card counting, what the optimal strategies are. He ran this all punch card programs through computers and figured out like, yeah, you could, you could have an edge on the casino with these systems.

Right. So that's another thing he got into. Then he realized at some point that wall street was like a much more interesting casino and they couldn't kick you out just because they didn't like you were winning too much. And so then he went there and he made a lot of money in wall street.

They were, he was early to sort of hedging strategies. He figured out early a, a version of basically the black souls derivative pricing formula, which one black and shows a Nobel prize. He didn't prove that his formula was right. That mathematics is very hard. That's kind of what they want, that microeconomics Nobel prize for, but he sort of figured out the formula.

Like, I think this more or less is correct. And so it made a lot of money trading. So interesting guy. He was unfair twice in like the last several months. So that's where you found him, right? Was Paris. Yeah. Yeah. So I listened to him and like, when I first started listening to the first episode, he was just like talking about working out and I was like, Oh, this guy's kind of cool.

And then I found out he was like 88 years old and I was like this guy's. So then I started looking into him more. So what do you think about this, Jesse? Like one thing I came away with is like the writing between the lines in this book is I don't know if he's frustrated about this.

He's obviously like a brilliant guy, but there's, there's all these areas where he was sort of early to something. This comes up again and again in the book, he was early to something that eventually became major, like one, someone, a Nobel prize, innovated a whole field or whatever. And he would always get to the point where, okay, I more or less know what's going on here and then moves on.

And then someone would come in later and sort of do the work more thoroughly and become very famous. And then someone will come in here. So like he had these kinds of breakthroughs in economics, but never really pushed them through other people did and became world famous economist, had these breakthroughs and how to run hedge funds, made himself, you know, millions of dollars, but he's defensive about, he was never a billion dollar hedge fund.

He was never one of the big guys, like the guys who swung in and like leveraged up and pushed these ideas and, and, and made the huge money. So it's like an interesting. Yeah. The one thing that happened to his fund was there was a little bit of trouble with that guy in New Jersey.

So they had to close it down. Yeah. So I think if that didn't happen, who knows what, but also he'd never seemed interested in world conquering. Yeah. I think he wanted to hang out with his family and his wife and he wanted to work out and do interesting stuff.

Yeah. Like, it's kind of like a deep life. That's what I'm thinking. So I think he's like a great, he's an interesting case study for different models of the deep life. And like, I think he's someone that was definitely thinking I've got this asset, which is this high octane brain.

Cause he's just like wanders into these areas and does like good work. And he said, okay, I have two options here. I could go all in with this brain on something. I think for him it could be essentially like make a run for a Nobel type thing or whatever, like getting an endowed chair at U Chicago or something like really like being a big guy in economics.

Or he could have gone all in and be like, I want to be, you know, I want billion plus net worth. Like both of those things were probably on the table for him. And he said, instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take advantage of this brain, which means I can, I can come in and out of a lot of things, like make enough money to be comfortable, explore, do interesting things, have control over my time.

And that's the route he went. And I think you're right to put out the deep life, because if you're looking at the buckets of the deep life and trying to think through, how am I going to service all of these buckets? It's not a bad strategy if you're super smart.

It's like, how can I use this to, to really have a lot of autonomy? Don't worry about money, but also be able to, he got really into working out, surfing, like all these different things. I can come in and out of opportunities. I can shut things down, do nothing for a few years.

They got really into charitable giving. I think initially when he was first, you know, after he got his doctorate, he was, because he mentions in the book, he didn't have a ton of money. So then he made some money off the publishing the book. And then I think once he started making it, he started making it pretty decent.

And then he realized he was probably set, you know? Yeah. And definitely the stock stuff too. Yeah. And the stock stuff made him millions. Yeah. But in the period of time where he was like looking at where to go. Like he was a good professor, not a great professor.

Like everything there was this, everything he did was competitive fields where he was good, not great, but he moved through a lot of the fields. Like he wasn't at a top economics department, but actually was doing cool applied math work, but then left. He wasn't one of the big, you know, hedge fund guys.

It's New York when buying a hundred million dollar, whatever. But he did well in the hedge funds. He like did well in the gambling. So I like it. I know why you recommended it. And I think it's like, he's not just interesting, but it's a nice case study of being incredibly intentional about, I have this asset let's build.

I think he built a really interesting life. Yeah. He has a lot of like good practical advice too. Like on his interview with Tim, just about, he's even talking about just like personal investments, like risk-taking, I guess, a human stuff like that. Yeah. So yeah, definitely listen to the interviews as well.

All right. So then I also, I listened to this one actually, Dilettante by Dana Brown. That's a memoir. It's, it's, it's like the devil wears Prada, but written by the assistant to Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. It's like a male devil's wear product. It was okay. Like, so Dana Brown, at least the way he tells the story is that he was bartending in the village, not really going anywhere.

And for various random reasons, ends up an assistant to the, the new sort of hotshot splashy head of Vanity Fair in the nineties when magazine publishing was like the powerful thing in media. And he kind of works his way up and he ended up a deputy editor at Vanity Fair.

So it's kind of interesting to hear the stories. I mean, I think the issue, it was good. I think it was interesting. You get an insight into what Condé Nast, Condé Nast was like in the nineties when it was the most, one of the most powerful because magazines were so profitable pre-internet, but right pre-internet and to be at one of their flagship publications, this, the, the, the money, the expense accounts, the, and so it was kind of cool to get into that world.

Dana Brown stories like kind of interesting. Implicit he doesn't really make this very, he's not really clear about it, but it's kind of obvious that he got hired in part because this guy has like model, good looks. Like he was a model and like, I think he was like a very attractive guy and it was part of the, the, the scene they wanted to paint.

And then he was just incredibly hardworking and sort of, sort of worked his way up, but it's not what he was doing is not that interesting. So the stories he was trying to spin, it's like, yeah, it's just a hard job. Like you gotta go to the, you have to go to all these events and work the door at the Oscar party and, and run stuff around town.

And I think that the interesting thing to me was just hearing about all that was going on with magazine publishing. You know, I have to do, I have to do a lot of Conde Nast online trainings because, because I'm a contributor at the New Yorker. I have a newyorker.com email address, which I don't use, but I have a newyorker.com email address and they're owned by Conde Nast and they just have these rules, a giant company.

So they just have these rules, like everyone who has a newyorker.com email address has to do all these like cybersecurity training. So I do like a non-trivial number of like watching the videos about how not to get catfished. And it's like my only intersection with corporate life. I know university life is its own thing, but that's its own little weird system.

My only intersection with, you know, big company, corporate, the it department needs you to do trainings is that newyorker.com email address. So, and because I don't use the address, I don't get the message. So what happens is I don't realize that there's these like increasingly urgent series of messages.

It's like you're over, you have to do your training. You don't like, why everyone has to do this? Like this is a problem getting yelled at because it gets escalated up. I think it gets escalated up. Yeah. Until it finally gets pretty high. And then eventually at some point someone will just, who knows me will email me directly to like my actual address.

Like you got to do these trainings, you got to do these trainings. Like we're getting yelled at by the ghost of Cy Hirst. You know, anyways, it's funny. So that's, that's my dose of, of corporateness. All right. The last book I read, this was just random. Uh, and I'll give you the backstory, the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

I read this book. Do you know this book? Somebody was talking about it. Is either you or Rogan talks about it. Yeah. Yeah. So this is like, as of this week, it came on 1997. I just checked before we recorded number four on Amazon charts. Maybe holiday gifted it to Rogan when he went on the show recently, he gave him a bunch of books at the end.

I didn't get to the end of Ryan's interview. He gave him like 12 books. I think this might've been one of them. Well, he owns a bookstore. So, so anyways, I was just curious. I was like, this, why is this book from the nineties, you know, decades later, like top four, top five of like everything's selling on Amazon.

So I went and read it. I don't know that I got an answer from reading it. It's short. It's for the four agreements, like four like agreements you should make with yourself. And they're like good life advice, you know, like be honest and don't care about what other people think.

It's like four things like that. Just like standard advice. Number four came out in 1997. There's like some interesting this to it. Like, so the guy is claiming like, there's this whole claim up front that this is, this is wisdom from like the Olmecs is sort of a lost ancient central American civilization.

And then he's like, I've, it's been passed through oral tradition. I've kind of captured it. He sets that up early on, but then the rest of the book is just standard, you know, self-help like you should be honest. It's here's why, like, it's, you don't want to get caught.

Like it's not like throughout he's like really pulling from an exotic wisdom tradition or whatever. So I don't know what it's just somehow this hit it's good advice. I don't know. I have heard Rogan talk about is like my whole life is built on it. And maybe that's why, maybe that's why it's number four, because I guess it's that guy was saying you should read this.

Probably. Yeah. So, so I don't know, but here's my quiz. All right. So then I looked up because I was looking this up. So I wrote down the top five as of this moment, the top five books this week on Amazon charts. Are you looking at it right now?

I'm looking at it. I was going to quiz you. I was going to quiz you because to be on the Amazon charts, it's not like momentarily. Are you number one? It's like the volume of books sold this week, number one volume, which it could be different than because, uh, different books will trade places in the number one spot just because, you know, oh, in the last hour or something happened.

Now I'm temporarily number one and then I disappear and someone else gets it, but the Amazon charts, but yeah, so top five, you see it right there. Number one, atomic habits. That book just kills it, huh? Just kills it. Just absolutely, absolutely kills it. Has he written any other ones yet?

No, he was working on one. He told me, he told me about what he was working on. This was like a little while ago and the one year anniversary of atomic habits. I did a interview with him or he interviewed me for a, like he was doing a bunch of videos to celebrate the one year anniversary.

And then afterwards he was telling me about what he was working on. I don't remember the idea. All I remember was thinking the moment like, oh, that's good. So he's got a good one waiting, but why would you rush it? Number one on Amazon charts. I mean, you're like, look, I don't know if this is the conversation he's happening, but I'll tell him the comp, I'll tell you the conversation his publisher is probably having with them.

This is working. Like, why do you want to cannibalize sales from yourself? If you're literally the number one selling book on Amazon right now, let that play out, you know, because think about it. If clear came out with a followup book, you, it wouldn't just be, okay, now we have all of those sales plus all the atomic habits.

It would probably cannibalize like you say, oh, I'm not going to get atomic habits. I'll get this new one or whatever. So I'm sure they're saying, what would you do if you were in that position? I'd let it, I'd let that, don't you really like writing? That's true. I don't know.

I don't know. I feel like you would. I think it's a, I think it's a really weird position to be in. It's like not a bad position because you get a lot of money and, but it's a weird position. If a book takes off like that, it's like if you're the actor who really likes acting and then in the nineties, like at the height of that, and you just have like a huge surprise blockbuster it's the, uh, like what it really changes things.

I guess you could just write more articles. Yeah. I think it would be complicated. Like if, if, if I had like an atomic habit style hit, it really complicates things. Well, it's funny. Cause I listened to like a lot of, I rehashed a lot of things like doing the YouTube channel and stuff.

So I hear what you say like four different times and you always talk about how like writing is like the top priority. So it's all I'm doing right now. Yeah. And it's like summertime, just got an, I'm writing, writing, writing. What would you do in the mornings? Row? Just be like a beast on the rowing machine.

Any arms and a huge back? Uh, I don't know. That's a good question. That's a good question. I don't, I mean, I don't know, uh, James clear well, but it's not like he was a book, right? He was, he had his own thing going on and then he wrote a book.

So I don't know if it's not like his main thing is book writing. So it's probably a different, different equation. No, I think that's right. I think Mark Manson had this issue too, after subtle art and he, and he want to go do other things and they're like, we have to maximize blah, blah, blah.

And he was like, screw you. He's like, I want to write. I think he's a guy who just wants to write. And at some point it was like, I'm just going to write. All right. Number two is the body keeps score. I think Oprah's involved in that, right? So that's like the least surprising.

Number three is Lisa price. The body keeps score. Julie writers. She was telling me about, it's about trauma and from like a scientific standpoint, like, you know, the science of trauma and how it affects people. And I, and I know Oprah's heavily involved in it somehow. So of course, number two, it makes sense.

Number three, green lights, Matt McConaughey. It makes sense. Right. I mean, he's like an interesting, famous guy. There's this, it's a weird book. I don't know. It's kind of weird. Right. But there's Matthew McConaughey stories in it. And there's like wisdom that either sounds really wise or kind of weird, but that's a weird juxtaposition.

There's like this interesting, famous guy writing something that's just not just a standard like celebrity memoir. Then four agreements is number four and a rich dad, poor dad's number five. Or said poor dad is don't have a salary. You should have assets to generate money. There you go. (upbeat music)