My Current Media Reading & Listening

In Blueprint, Nicholas A.  Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide.  With many vivid examples - including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own - Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness.

In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past.  But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilization, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies have shaped, and are still shaping, our genes today.

For the last two years, I've interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show.  The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists.  For most of my guests, it's the first time they've agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview.  This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads.

"This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and 'inside baseball' you won't find anywhere else.

"What makes the show different is a relentless focus on actionable details.  This is reflected in the questions.  For example: What do these people do in the first 60 minutes of each morning?  What do their workout routines look like, and why?  What books have they gifted most to other people?  What are the biggest wastes of time for novices in their field?  What supplements do they take on a daily basis?

To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy.  But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact.  This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function.  We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways the environment affects our behavior via factors varying from subconscious sights and sounds to the weather.

As a result, we alternately overestimate our capacity for free will or equate brains to inorganic machines like computers.  But a brain is neither a soul nor an electrical network: It is a bodily organ, and it cannot be separated from its surroundings.

Our selves aren't just inside our heads - they're spread throughout our bodies and beyond.  Only once we come to terms with this can we grasp the true nature of our humanity.

From the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe comes a captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose.

Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse.  Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.

From particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, matter to meaning - Brian Greene allows us all to grasp and appreciate our fleeting but utterly exquisite moment in the cosmos.

"There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature." Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book.

Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.  In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as: Why is there conflict between groups?  Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors?  Why are there religions?  What is social justice?  What explains morality?  Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation.

In This Explains Everything, John Brockman, founder and publisher of Edge.org, asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences.  Why do we recognize patterns?  Is there such a thing as positive stress?  Are we genetically programmed to be in conflict with each other?  Those are just some of the 150 questions that the world's best scientific minds answer with elegant simplicity.

With contributions from Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Nassim Taleb, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more, everything is explained in fun, uncomplicated terms that make the most complex concepts easy to comprehend.

In their book Abundance, best-selling authors and futurists Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler tackled grand global challenges, such as poverty, hunger, and energy.  Then, in Bold, they chronicled the use of exponential technologies that allowed the emergence of powerful new entrepreneurs.  Now the best-selling authors are back with The Future Is Faster Than You Think, a blueprint for how our world will change in response to the next 10 years of rapid technological disruption.

Technology is accelerating far more quickly than anyone could have imagined.  During the next decade, we will experience more upheaval and create more wealth than we have in the past hundred years.  In this gripping and insightful roadmap to our near future, Diamandis and Kotler investigate how wave after wave of exponentially accelerating technologies will impact both our daily lives and society as a whole.  What happens as AI, robotics, virtual reality, digital biology, and sensors crash into 3D printing, blockchain, and global gigabit networks?  How will these convergences transform today’s legacy industries?  What will happen to the way we raise our kids, govern our nations, and care for our planet?

Diamandis, a space-entrepreneur-turned-innovation-pioneer, and Kotler, best-selling author and peak performance expert, probe the science of technological convergence and how it will reinvent every part of our lives - transportation, retail, advertising, education, health, entertainment, food, and finance - taking humanity into uncharted territories and reimagining the world as we know it.

As indispensable as it is gripping, The Future Is Faster Than You Think provides a prescient look at our impending future.