Our second recap! In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat revisit the previous books and topics discussed on the podcast. We delve into the most useful lessons that we’ve learned so far. It’s perfect for newer listeners to catch up with the older episodes. Listen to this episode irrigated with Malbec.
We cover a wide range of topics, including:
And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to check out all of our episodes here.
1:25 – This episode is entirely sponsored by YOU via Patreon! Follows this link to directly support us. Check out the lovely bonuses you receive by supporting the show.
2:46 – Antifragile. Barbells strategy. Learning how to take advantage of chaos in the world.
3:30 – Letters from a Stoic. Acquire a new mental model for handling stress and challenges in your life.
4:00 – Mastery.
4:18 – The Power of Myth. Why we should take religions more seriously.
4:42 – Sovereign Individual. Rethink the permanence of the nation-states and what your future might look like in a society dominated by technology.
5:44 – In Praise of Idleness. Stop working so hard and reasons you should consider working less hard.
6:05 – Crypto episode. Principles of the tech behind Bitcoin and why you should care.
07:02 – Amusing Ourselves to Death. Don’t watch the news, but listen to MYT.
7:22 – Finite and Infinite Games. Look at yourself as part of parallel finite and infinite games played in the world, and recognize artificial constraints to play infinitely.
8:23 – Way of Zen. All what you know about Buddhism and meditation is wrong.
9:06 – Emergency. Steps you should take to protect yourself when the society breaks down.
10:09 – GEB. Strange loops. Patterns that hint at the meaning of intelligence and why it may create issues while trying to understand our intelligence or building AIs.
12:08 – Think Like Elon Musk. Thinking independently vs copying the routines of others. Reasoning for firsts principles.
12:52 – The Goal. Theory of constraints, bottlenecks in businesses.
13:50 – Principles. Lots of business tactics.
14:39 – The Inner Game of Tennis. Learning how to get out of your own way to perform better.
15:03 – Psychology of Human Misjudgments. Guide for better decision making and catalog of human misjudgements.
15:35 – Work Clean. Keep your desk organized to get less distracted.
16:55 – Denial of Death. Our lives are driven by our fear of our mortality.
17:18 – Influence. Classic marketing tactics to make people trust you.
18:06 – Recap #1.
19:01 – Revolt of the Masses. Interesting ideas of the stratification of society. Against rent seekers and bureaucrat layers. Reading summaries will not convert you in Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.
24:24 – Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. There’s really no meaning to life if Darwin’s evolutionary theories are correct. Aquatic Apes theory! Evolution makes life inherently meaningless. Superstition in animals. Should we eat humans?
28:50 – What Every Body is Saying. Textbook to decipher body language. Communicating with body language, and dating.
32:59 – Hiroshima Diary. Private diary of a doctor from Hiroshima injured in a blast. How much humans are capable of enduring without breaking. Perspective on hardship.
35:59 – 12 Rules for Life. Peterson is a quite controversial character. Gender ideas, misinterpretation, toxic masculinity.
42:18 – Merchants of Doubt. Scientists that get paid to create fake science to support destructive practices of some companies. The problem of Media communicating science.
49:55 – Leverage Points. 12 points you can intervene in a complex system to create some change, and the relative power of each of them. Which President is sitting in the Oval Office is less important than the rules, the government and context inside and outside the country.
52:26 – Support the show on Patreon and help us buy a Tangents Button.
54:15 – Daily Rituals. People doing a lot of drugs. Historically geniuses were drug nubs, drunks, and not sleeping. It’s hard to evaluate instant productivity.
59:40 – Skin in the Game. Appendix to Antifragile. Comparing this book with others by Nassim Taleb. Good way to structure your own compensation. Curious notes on Taleb’s personality.
1:06:11 – The Riddle of the Gun. A concise, clear, apolitical, view-changer article in favor of gun ownership. Nuances of a black-or-white issue. Micro and macro level incentives. The naive reaction of liberal people.
1:12:00 – Subscribe to the show’s Patreon, and discover the secret Nat’s misadventures on Facebook.
1:12:20 – Discipline and Punish. Not a BDSM-sex book. It requires discipline to go through the book, and, after it, you’ll feel punished. Better to listen to our episode :). A book about post-modernism. Listen to our analogy on Nietzschism and Nazism.
1:16:42 – Harari’s 3 parts saga. Sapiens part 1, part 2, and Homo Deus. Mythology and shared stories as big driving forces for human development and organization of large sets of humans. Examples: Money, Cities, Companies.
1:21:21 – Listeners Questions #1. Flow, happiness, power, future of work, personal backgrounds. Subscribe on Patreon to ask questions for the next Listeners’ episode.
1:22:44 – Solitude and Leadership. Our first speech. Spend time on your own having the freedom from interruptions, to become a better thinker, doer and leader. Otherwise, amuse yourself to death or be an excellence sheep. There are so many differences between our reality and our biology that we have to construct our reality to be more in line with our biology. Think about your solitude the same way as your diet.
1:25:22 – Atlas Shrugged. The Behemoth. Compelling case for physical Conservatism. A book that will make you respect entrepreneurship.
1:29:58 – The Book of 5 Rings. Applying strategy, military tactics, and sword fighting, to life.
1:32:55 – The Jungle. A “funny” counterpart to Atlas Shrugged. Differences between Anarchism and Libertarianism. “Capitalism is the worst economic system except of all the others“.
1:37:46 – The Elephant in the Brain. Secret motivations for doing things that we don’t like to talk about because they are ugly and focusing on the pretty side of our actions. Evolutionary reasons to hide those motives even to ourselves. A case for not being so introspective.
1:41:15 – The College Dropout. Our first music album! Growing up poor and making it big. Poetry, well constructed, and with many levels of interpretation. even if you don’t like rap, consider listening to the episode, it will make you like rap a little bit more. Kanye as a brilliant marketer.
1:45:05 – Sponsors. Sign up to Patreon to get more notes, goodies, and chat with us. Try Perfect Keto‘s Nut Butter. A frosting experience, great texture, great flavor, macadamia, cashew, coconut and MCT oil and sea salt. Try Four Sigmatic’s Lemonade, a jet black lemonade with activated charcoal along with chaga mushroom. Reach us on Twitter, TheRealNeilS and nateliason. Review us iTunes. Keep telling your friends, that’s the #1 way people hear about MYT.
