My Favorite Things

Whenever I’m asked “what’s your favorite X?” I often find myself fall prey to the recency effect, and end up listing the most recent X I was thinking about. This page is a running tally of books, podcasts, and articles that most influenced my worldview—the “view quakes” that shook me to the core.

Books

Podcasts

I don’t follow any individual podcast religiously, as I find the quality of the episodes are highly correlated to the quality of the guests. Given the standard interview format of most podcasts I listen to, the quality of the content can therefore be hit-or-miss. This is why I follow specific guests rather than a specific podcast. Some guests that I highly recommend:

Tyler Cowen

Tyler’s Conversations with Tyler is my exception to the rule. Tyler is a brilliant interviewer and conversationalist, and invites guests from a broad range of interests including poets, scientists, hitchhikers, and of course, economists.

Patrick Collison

Patrick is a voracious reader, and a deep insightful thinker across a range of subjects. Of course, as the CEO of Strips, Patrick also has a ton to offer on startups and entrepreneurship. I highly recommend checking out his personal site and bookshelf as well.

Patrick's interview of Tyler is a good place to start.

Eric Weinstein

Eric gives perhaps the highest signal-to-noise ratio interviews in podcasting. His orthogonal insights, and the way he methodically teases apart complex issues is a masterclass on analytical thinking.

I'd recommend starting with Tim Ferriss' interview of Eric

Tip: If you have an Android device, the Google Podcasts app has a good search feature to find episodes from specific guests. Let me know if you have recommendations for iOS.

Miscellaneous episodes