Kitchen Confidential

by Anthony Bourdain

I loved Anthony Bourdain’s show Parts Unknown. Please watch it if you haven’t. This book is also fantastic. I especially recommend listening to the audio-book version because Bourdain reads it himself, and it very much adds to the experience. Bourdain was such a unique individual. He was an adventurer. A modern-day pirate of sorts, but with a warm heart. At least, that’s how I think about him. I consider this one required reading for dentists too. I don’t know that it should be surprising, but there are many parallels and cross-overs between the restaurant business and owning and operating a dental practice.

Born to Run

by Bruce Springsteen

I knew almost nothing about “The Boss” before reading this book. I can’t say I’m a lifelong fan of his music or anything like that. I didn’t start listening to music until I was in college and a friend showed me, Pandora. I’m clueless when it comes to music. Less clueless now, but still clueless. That being said, this book was excellent. First of all, Springsteen is a hell of a writer. He knows how to draw you in and keep your attention with great emotional details. I’m sure writing songs over the years honed that skill for him. As an aspiring stand-up comic, I was very attracted to his artistic drive and work ethic. If you want to make it in the arts, this seems like one of the books that should be on your list. Maybe it’s just survival bias, but Springsteen sounds like he has some of the magic ingredients for artistic success. And again, the audio-book version that Springsteen reads makes the experience more personal. You feel the words more than if you just read them silently.

Greenlights

by Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey is a weird dude. He somehow pulls off a relaxed, carefree attitude while simultaneously working his butt off to be a master of his craft. He knows how the hell to chase a dream. I wish I had read this book when I was 18. Sadly, it wasn’t written until I was 31. Combined with watching Gary V videos, that will have to be good enough. McConaughey is fun to listen to. He knows how to tell a story. He has some solid advice. I wanna grow up to be like Matthew. Greenlight.

the war of art

by Steven Pressfield

The subtitle to this book is “Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.” That’s pretty self explanatory as to when you should read this one. If you are struggling to move forward with a project, this is your book. If you have a creative vision that is not yet crystallized and you’re struggling to motivate yourself to make something happen, this is your book. It’s a gut punch to wake you up and a slap on the back to get you going. You have great things to accomplish in this world. Don’t let resistance get in the way. You’re an artist. Apologize to no one. Be who you are. Make your art.

The Fred Factor

By Mark Sanborn

The story of the world’s nicest mailman. Do you feel dead inside every day you go to work? I know I used to. I still have those days, but now I have less of them. As Camus explained, we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Fred is a happy Sisyphus. You can be one too. You just gotta love people and stuff.

Ego Is the Enemy

By Ryan Holiday

I found Ryan Holiday when I first started exploring the blogging site Medium. This was a time in my life when I was feeling a bit directionless. I was finally out of school and in the “real world,” but much of my work felt empty and purposeless. My work environment was also incredibly stressful and hostile. I didn’t know what it was like to be in a toxic relationship until I had my first real job. That was an unpleasant but necessary crash course. Enter Ryan Holiday and his quest to revive stoic philosophy in the 21st century. I had taken several courses as an undergraduate student and had brushed elbows with stoicism as a result. However, it had been a while since life had slapped me in the face as hard as I was currently being slapped, and I needed some inspiration. Ryan does a great job of making stoic ideas relatable. I don’t view stoicism as a panacea for every problem. It’s not the only valid frame of mind for assessing the world. Still, it can be damn useful, and I recommend you get acquainted with the mindset if you aren’t already. Humble yourself. Do the work.

The Obstacle is the Way

By Ryan Holiday

More stories illustrating stoic principles. A seemingly insurmountable life problem staring you in the face? Take that as an opportunity to grow, change, and accomplish great things you would never have considered before.

Stillness is the key

By Ryan Holiday

Have you had enough stories about people exemplifying stoicism yet? No? Cool. The theme of this one is keeping calm under stress. The world gets loud and distracting. If you can stay focused on your goals and not get pulled into the fray, you’ve got a halfway decent chance of making it through.

Meditations

By Marcus Aurelius

The private musings and self-helpy reminders of Marcus Aurelius to himself. Never meant to be made public, these thoughts were the inspiration for Ryan Holiday’s fruitful venture into stoic philosophy. Maybe they’ll inspire you as well? If nothing else, Marcus manages to garner a few laughs with his comments on how his sperm is worm food. Ok, maybe he didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but he says something along those lines…

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

By Malcolm X and Alex Haley

Stole this one from Ryan Holiday’s book club. Go to his website and sign up for his email newsletter. Very worth it if you’re dealing with a tumultuous time in your life. Speaking of dealing with a difficult life and making lemonade out of lemons, you need to read Malcolm X’s story.

Extreme Ownership

By Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

These guys knock it out of the park. I can already hear the objections: “But, but, but!!! People can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps!!! It’s impossible!!!” You’re right. Sometimes life is too hard, you get overwhelmed, you suffer terribly and unjustly, and you die. That’s real. That’s unfair. You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry it happened. I wish I could have helped you change it. That being said: your only chance in hell of avoiding that fate is to adopt an attitude of personal responsibility and do everything you can to maximize your potential and contribute as much as you can to human flourishing. That’s the best we have to offer as human beings. It’s not fair. It’s not just. It just is what it is. We’re stuck with the human condition until we obliterate it with robots or the singularity or whatever. Make the best of what you have to work with. These Navy SEALs have some excellent tips on how you can do that.

Sapiens

By Yuval Noah Harari

I LOVED this book. ALL CAPS. LOVED. If you want a kick to the noggin that will help you contextualize your existence within the larger framework of human history, read this one. Yuval takes you on a tour through the history of the evolution of the human mind—how it has been adapted, molded, and reshaped by our social context throughout the years. It’s also a terrifically readable book. More readable than the gobbledegook sentence that preceded the one previous to this one which is also frustratingly resistant to readability. Yuval doesn’t write sentences like that. He makes the esoteric accessible. Sapiens will appeal to you if you’re interested in history, philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, anthropology, theology, or you know, happen to be a member of our species. The book will give the way you view yourself and your society a nice shake and hopefully stir new creative ideas in your mind. I wrote about one of my favorite chapters here if you need more convincing.

Notes of a Native Son

By James Baldwin

James Baldwin is one hell of an intellectual. His ideas are piercing. He is so astute. His writing is bold. This work was first published in 1955. It continues to be very relevant today. The ideas are still vibrant and critical to contend with. Baldwin discusses race relations in America as they need to be discussed. Honestly. If you want to be honest with yourself, I think you need to read Baldwin. His words are vital whether you are white, black, Asian, Hispanic, Arab—in the end, all of these race distinctions are arbitrary. The real divides are cultural—our attacks on each other’s “race” amount to little more than biological confusion and lies. Baldwin cuts through the fog. He plunges his hands into humankind’s chest and wraps them around our collective heart. He feels it beating. Vulnerable. Scared. Longing for love and kindness. He knows we are not truly different, but he refuses to let that become a platitude that allows dismissal of the real discrimination and violence that we regularly inflict on ourselves and each other. From his autobiographical notes that open this collection of essays: “ I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” Read Baldwin. He was an honest man and an excellent writer.

Maps of Meaning

By Jordan B. Peterson

I was not too fond of Jordan Peterson when I first encountered him online. Luckily, my insatiable curiosity got the better of me, and I read his books and watched his lectures in full. Peterson is far from perfect, just like every other one of us perfectly flawed human beings struggling to get by on this planet. Despite his lowly status as lacking in omniscience and omnipotence, the man manages to do a fair deal of good for the world. He also stokes negativity in the souls of some, and that’s not great, but I’m convinced at this point that that is far from his intention the vast majority of the time (he occasionally missteps, as we all do). Maps of Meaning is a true masterwork. The breadth and depth of Peterson’s investigation into how the human mind tries to interpret the objective world through its subjective filter is impressive. His efforts to recontextualize our understanding of the historical development arcs of mythology, literature, philosophy, and science are tremendously insightful. This book is a bridge between so many different ways of approaching knowledge. If you are of an intellectually curious persuasion, I don’t know how you could fail to find this book fascinating. There are points at which the discussion does become murkier and more difficult to follow. I’m thinking particularly about his attempts to explain what Carl Jung was up to in his alchemy descriptions. However, upon rereading these sections with the benefit of further exposure to Peterson’s YouTube lectures, I made some more sense out of what he was getting at. Even if you skip the alchemy stuff at the end, you’ll have learned a great deal of invaluable information about how the human mind functions and, consequently, how you ought to act in the world. It is no understatement to claim that this book has significantly altered the way that I am living my life, and I have to say that so far, the results have been overwhelmingly positive. If you want a less complex introduction to Peterson, you can also start with his more well-known 12 Rules for Life. He reviews much of the material discussed in Maps of Meaning but recasts it in more relatable modern terms. There is also some original material in 12 Rules that is worth your time. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have understood Maps of Meaning as fully if I hadn’t read 12 Rules.

The Denial of Death

By Ernest Becker

You probably want to be confident that you are on stable psychological ground before you read this book. Becker is going to tear you apart if you aren’t. If you’ve already weathered a few existential crises and came out reasonably well off, then dive right in and start swimming. The effort will strengthen your resolve. Or maybe you’ll crack. Sorry.

Unf#ck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers

By Faith G. Harper

It’s been a while since I listened to this one as an audiobook, but I remember it being a greatly appreciated mental sigh of relief at the time. I’ve never been to see a therapist (except for one time when I was a kid and threatened to off myself, but I actually don’t even remember going). I probably should have seen a therapist when I was in my early 20’s. But it was expensive, and I was afraid of the stigma, and I was not supposed to have any real problems because I’m an upper-class American white guy, and blah, blah, blah…If you need to see a therapist, see a therapist. Fuck anyone who doesn’t understand that. Starting with this book might help you figure out the right therapist for you. I would also HIGHLY recommend Jordan Peterson (both his books and his YouTube content).

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

By Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

Intellectual exploration and discovery always came naturally to me. I’m an introvert, always getting lost in my somewhat scatterbrained thoughts. I was very socially awkward for much of my life and still can be in many situations, although I’ve certainly made progress and can handle many social contexts quite well these days. My family has never been particularly apt to express emotions openly. I’ll spare you any more details about my psychological underpinnings, but suffice it to say that it isn’t healthy to learn about the concept of emotional intelligence when you’re in your mid 20’s as I did. You want to get a grasp on this much younger. If you were properly socialized, you probably already do and have little need for this book. However, if you find that your interactions with other people are less than smooth, despite the best of intentions on your part, then you probably ought to give this book a look. Even if you’re someone far more interested in ideas than people, please realize that it hardly matters if you have a high IQ but fail to connect with other people for a fruitful exchange of ideas.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

By Robert M. Sapolsky

Many “hard-core” scientists and physicians poo-poo the idea that the generic, mysterious catch-all condition of “stress” can be responsible for so many human maladies. After reading this book, you’ll view such skepticism with skepticism. Understanding all the damaging and compounding effects of stress on the human body isn’t going to be a cure-all. However, if it convinces you to be less hard on yourself and others to reduce stress for everyone involved to a manageable level, then that’s progress in my book. Dr. Sapolsky takes you on a brilliant tour of the effects stress has on the body and mind. He drops hints as to how you can modulate and balance stress in your own life. I went through some intensely stressful times from my late teen years until I was nearly 30. There were serious negative effects on my physical and mental health. I had digestive issues physicians didn’t understand. I was suicidal for stretches and didn’t know how to talk to anyone about it. It was a big ‘ole mess. After reading this book, many of the more mysterious events and struggles from this time period in my life appear much less confusing. Seeing through that fog and realizing what went wrong has helped me to organize my life more healthily.

Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?

By Dr. Mark Hyman

Nutrition is confusing. The science is in-exact and based on retrospective survey data that aren’t all that reliable. What gets reported in the news is usually more alarming sensationalism than useful, practical advice. Dr. Hyman’s book is fairly comprehensive. His advice is NOT easy to follow in our fast food/supermarket world. I was forced to radically change my diet because I developed intensely painful digestive issues that interfered with my ability to live my life. This book was part of that process. I follow much of Dr. Hyman’s advice as best I can. I am also an adherent to a low-FODMAP diet. Everyone’s nutrition choices are personal and involve lots of considerations. All I can say is that I am happier, have more energy, sleep better, and am finally pain-free. This book was part of that transformation. Dr. Hyman also has a helpful podcast and website. You have to be disciplined to make these changes. I wasn’t able to do it until pain forced me to. If you’re at a point in your life where you don’t feel like you are getting high-quality nutrition that is improving your health and empowering you to do the things you want to accomplish in life, make the change. It’s worth it. It’s difficult, but it’s worth it.

Why We Sleep

By Matthew Walker

This book explained many of the contributing factors to why I was so unbelievably irritated and depressed during high school. Holy shit, I wish I had had this information then. Then again, my irritable, sad little brain might have been too stubborn and tired to process the info back then. I spent a lot of time being miserable. Turns out your brain needs sleep to be healthy. I spent way too much time doing homework and waking up for morning swim practices. Luckily, I’ve changed my lifestyle drastically, and my sleep quality is much higher. It’s insane how much of a difference that makes in your life and how much you don’t even realize what is possible when you’re treating your body like a trash can that doesn’t need any shuteye. Read this book, and you will understand why the mantra “You can sleep when your dead” is terrible advice and will result in you sleepwalking through “life.” If you want to live life on your terms and maximize your potential, you need consistent quality sleep. This is not debatable. It’s hard science. No, you’re not wired differently. You are not the exception. Prioritize sleep, and you will be far more happy and productive. It’s a major component of your health, and it will either have a significant positive impact on your life or a very negative one.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Some of the attitude behind Freakonomics can be summarized fairly well by this excerpt: “…when moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, most subjects actually become even more compelling. Morality…represents the way that people would like the world to work, whereas economics represents how it actually does work.” As a perhaps counterintuitive example of this line of thinking: one of the more encouraging lessons at the beginning of this book is that money may not be as important in politics as we’ve all been led to believe. Maybe we have more power than we think if we utilize simpler, inexpensive tools? Read this book if you want lessons in thinking critically for yourself. You have a unique perspective on the world, and that means you’ll see things others don’t if you’re paying attention (also, still pay attention to what others have to offer - they see unique things that you’re not). If you’re still on the fence about reading this one, consider: isn’t it cute that both of the authors have the same first name, but they spell it differently? Plus, they both use their middle initial. Adorable! I wonder if they always both used their middle initial, or if only one of them did, but then they thought: “We can’t both be on the cover and only have one of us with a middle initial. That guy might look snooty. We should present a united front. It just has more of a ring to it if we both go middle initial. Not to mention, our middle initials spell DJ together, and I really like Full House, as well as house music, so…” I imagine the conversation/inner monologue went something like that.

SuperFreakonomics

By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Are you ready for Rick James to teach you everything there is to know about behavioral economics? Well, Rick (Side note: It looks like Mr. James saw a good dentist between the making of those two videos. Sorry to be cheeky. I spend a lot of time around cheeks, what can I say.) may not be directly involved, but Steven and Stephen are back again to talk about the economics of super freaky ladies (and men), plus some other stuff, such as dead horses and manure! If that doesn’t turn you on to how important understanding economics and psychology in relation to one another is, I give up. Warning: They also use the word “ejaculate” to describe the debris expelled by a volcano at one point. So, there’s that.

The Essential Adam Smith

Collection Edited by Robert L. Heilbroner

I read this one many moons ago when I was in college. If you at all enjoyed reading Freakonomics (which I didn’t get to until much later in the year 2019) as a casual introduction to economic thinking, you definitely should dive into the source material. Adam Smith was the OG when it comes to economics. Levitt and Dubner pay homage in Freakonomics, but I’m confident you’ll be impressed by what Smith had to say over 200 years ago. How do you participate in economic activity in an ethical manner? Smith’s got ideas y’all.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

By John Maynard Keynes

Keynes offers a balanced counterargument to laissez-faire capitalism. This is why we now accept government intervention in the business world with stimulus plans and adjustments to monetary policy. Consider his views to be a sort of “socialism-lite.” Most economists accept the Keynesian view these days, especially in practice. It’s rare that you’ll find a politician anywhere on the political spectrum who isn’t trying to stimulate some business with government subsidies. Basically, only hard-core libertarians object at this point, and even they end up voting for plenty of bills that apply Keynes's economic logic. The trouble is we haven’t quite figured out how to be tighter with our collective budget in the good times so we can properly afford the debt accumulation in sparse times. Chalk that up to us being more Homer Simpson than Mr. Spock. Daggone inertia. If you don’t know what I mean by that, read Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein as well as Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

The Communist Manifesto

By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Whereas Capital takes you through Marx’s economic theories in-depth, the Manifesto is more of a political document. Lucky for you this one is short and sweet. It’s an easy introduction to some of his thinking. I didn’t include an Amazon affiliate link for this one because it can easily be read for free online. Plus, it felt like a cheeky jab at Marx to “sell” you his ideas via a capitalist pig enterprise like the Amazon marketplace, right? That’s a little rude. For anyone who is pissed an ardent capitalist like myself would encourage people to read Marx, I encourage you to read this excellent article by Anne Applebaum. Or we could just be poo-poo heads and try to cancel Marx for being racist.

Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production

By Karl Marx, edited by Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx was right about a lot of the problems with capitalism. No question. Workers at the bottom of the hierarchy do get screwed in a lot of ways. Read Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens as well. There is a good argument to be made that the agricultural and industrial revolutions have created massive amounts of human misery (in addition to the incredible wealth and luxury for many of us). The internal logic of capitalism is dangerous. Adam Smith knew this as well. The problem is that the political solutions Marx and Engels were in favor of as a corrective don’t work. They just cause more misery. That’s been proven over and over. So, by all means, do read Marx. He was very intelligent. His criticisms need to be taken seriously. Just be careful of convincing yourself that he fully understood the implications of his own ideology. Be sure to get out into the world and interact with people and ask yourself if they typically and consistently behave in a way that aligns with the ideal “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” I did include an Amazon link for this one. Sorry. Couldn’t resist being a tad cheeky in the end.

Nudge

by Richard thaler and Cass sunstein

I love this book. Honestly, the writing isn’t that engaging. It gets pretty boring for stretches. Many of the best ideas are front-loaded in the opening chapters. Still, the good ideas it does contain are worth suffering some of the clunky packaging around them. Choice architecture. Homer Simpson and Mr. Spock. Nudges need to be emotional/unconscious, not logical/conscious. Once you get a firm grasp of those ideas, economic activity in the real world will start to make a lot more sense to you. Read Thinking, Fast and Slow, as well as Atomic Habits to go along with this one. Daniel Kahneman is pessimistic about our ability as clueless humans to modify our biases in life. That may well be true moment to moment. However, I think there is hope for using a little choice architecture to nudge our habits in the right direction. If you have no idea what I mean by any of this, read these three books. We’re trying to be more economical with your behavior. Change your environment, change your incentives, change your life. And oh yeah, I almost forgot: this is our only chance of fixing healthcare (unless the robots cure everything first).

Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman helped inspire the field of behavioral economics, a field I have been fascinated by since studying economics and philosophy in parallel during college. The charts and graphs in economics courses never seemed to line up with the mysteries of human behavior I was contending with in my political philosophy courses. Kahneman’s work as a social psychologist sheds some light on these mysteries. Your brain doesn’t work how you think it works. That’s fine. It’s ok to be wrong. The way you evolved to function isn’t your fault. If you like biology as I do, you should also follow reading this book with reading Robert Sapolsky’s Behave. I plan to review and compare my notes on both in the future. Human behavior is becoming less and less mysterious. The next question is, what do we do with this new knowledge of how our quirky behavior truly functions in real world scenarios? For an easy first step in that direction, I suggest reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

By Michael S. Gazzaniga

I read some of Baruch Spinoza’s work when I was in college. It convinced me (along with my introductory knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology) that free will was an inaccurate concept. It is not something that properly describes the human condition. Dr. Gazzaniga tries to parse the concept in a way that may be more palatable to our fragile human egos, but ultimately I don’t think mental gymnastics are necessary. I maintain a practical approach to life insofar as I am conscious of “making choices.” I don’t fret about the fact that this is a mere cognitive illusion. There’s nothing to be done about it. If it is the case, then it has always been that way. Nothing has changed. What I’m trying to say is that if you are interested in discussions of neurology in relation to free will, this is a fascinating book. And the endorsement stands despite my minor disagreements with the author.

Atomic Habits

By James Clear

This is the paint by number book to improve your life. James Clear makes it clear (I’m sorry, but the name works) how to build the version of yourself you want to see in the mirror every day. Habits. Routines. The little things (hence “atomic”) that you repeat again and again. Most of your life is the routine and repetitive little stuff. It’s not the big events. The stuff you do on autopilot? These are the areas of your life you need to be more intentional. You need to structure your habits so that they steer you inevitably toward your goals. If you set up the proper choice architecture (see also Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge) in your life, then you go from having to have the skill to bowl a strike every game to the ability to lob the ball down the lane and let the bumpers bounce you repeatedly back on track toward those pins. Achieving excellence is less difficult than you think, but you have to organize your environment to create positive inertia for you. You want gravity that pulls you toward better choices. How has this book affected my life directly? I have a workspace specifically for writing. I write jokes in that space. I write blog posts in that space. I am writing this in that space. It’s a simple desk that faces a wall with my laptop. The desk is covered with notes of encouragement. There are notes about my artistic process as a joke writer. I review these periodically to keep them in mind as I’m working on jokes. I have notes on proper posture when sitting, taking breaks, and exercises and stretches during those breaks. The environment encourages the behaviors I desire. I do the same thing with the space that I record my YouTube videos in. I keep a book by my bedside always so that I have something to read before falling asleep. I have a list of podcasts and audio-books I want to listen to sitting by the TV to see them often and have a nudge to educate myself further rather than fall into more screen time as my default. If any of this sounds crazy to you, I promise you that it works. I’ve been far more productive since reading this book, and I was hardly a slouch before. Maybe your goal isn’t productivity. Maybe you already work too hard, and you want to spend more time with your family and friends. Guess what? You can structure your environment to bumper bowl you toward those goals as well. Clear walks you through some basic truths about human behavioral psychology and teaches you how to hijack them to improve your life. It’s great stuff. There’s a reason this book has continued to become more and more popular. Last I checked, the number of reviews on Amazon was starting to catch up to The Hunger Games. That’s awesome. I can’t tell you how much hope that gives me that a practical self-improvement book can gain that kind of traction. Congrats, and thank you to James Clear. Now it’s your turn. Read the book. Get out there and kick some ass.

The Checklist Manifesto

By Atul Gawande

As a dentist, I’m a healthcare provider. I do my best to provide the highest possible care to patients I treat, but I fall short all the time. This isn’t because I didn’t excel in my years of training to become a dentist. This isn’t because I’m not putting in sufficient effort. It’s because I am a human, and humans can’t execute treatment algorithms perfectly no matter how smart or hard-working they happen to be. Enter the cute little choice architecture tool of the checklist. In some cases, checklists are smarter than people, even people with off-the-charts IQ’s who went to elite top-tier medical schools and have published research in the most respected medical journals. Forget being outsmarted by robots in the future; we could use help from a little pen and ink from the past. I’m convinced that the keys to improving health outcomes across the board can be found in this book, read in concert with Atomic Habits by James Clear, Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. Check out Dr. Mark Hyman’s work as well.

Behave

By Robert Sapolsky

This book is a biological tour de force as to why you do what you do. Neurology. Endocrinology. Genetics. Development. Cultural conditioning. What are the implications of this modern biological understanding of behavior related to history, morality, and the future? Dr. Sapolsky has thoughts, and they are pretty damn good ones. As with Dr. Sapolsky’s excellent book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, there are also some hints pertaining to why our corporate health care models are failing to improve health outcomes. For example, increasing cognitive load through overburdening healthcare providers (or any human) with more new and difficult tasks results in less pro-social behavior. There’s a reason health care doesn’t feel like care these days. People aren’t very caring when you stretch them to their breaking point.

Waking Up

By Sam Harris

Spirituality isn’t about anything mystical or inexplicable by science. It’s the insight that we are all connected. That the ego is an illusion, a valuable product of our evolutionary history, but not an accurate or all-encompassing description of our existence. Once you transcend the ego and realize how connected we all are - indeed, how connected everything is - it becomes less of a task to develop an ethical system that takes more than the individual into account. I first heard about Harris when I was in college, and he teamed up with the rest of the infamous Four Horsemen to lead the so-called New Atheism movement. I was well on my way to being an atheist myself at that point, but there was something about their tone that I disliked. After listening to Sam's debate with Jordan Peterson and tuning into his podcast, Making Sense, I’ve come to appreciate more nuance in his thinking. I understand now why he can come across as harsh and biting. He often feels attacked and that he has to defend himself. I worry that may alienate more moderate people who would otherwise be interested in what he has to say. Of course, to be fair to Sam, the way many media outlets portray him can be less than fair. I think he has also learned to play nicer over the years after so many intellectual sparring matches. Anyway, you should read this book. It’s worth your time and consideration. Sam Harris has a unique perspective on the human mind, and there is much you can learn whether you agree with him or not.

How to Change Your Mind

By Michael Pollan

As someone who has never used drugs of any kind (as in I don’t even drink coffee), I found this book perhaps even more fascinating than it would be for someone who is already highly interested in psychedelics. For an introduction to the topic, Pollan’s treatment of the subject matter feels fairly comprehensive. I’m convinced that the effects these drugs have on the mind can provide us with valuable insights on living a better life. I don’t think you have to take the drugs to understand and implement some of those insights, at least to a degree. If you want to get the most out of this book, I suggest reading it in conjunction with Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, and Sam Harris’s Waking Up.

Comedy Sex God

By Pete Holmes

If you are a comedy nerd who grew up religious, Pete is for you. Maybe start with his podcast You Made It Weird. Look through the catalog of episodes, and you’re likely to find interviews with some of your favorite comics. This book is a mish-mash of comedy, religion, and psychedelic exploration. You don’t have to have experienced psychedelics to find the mish-mash interesting. We’re all trying to figure this whole meaning of life/personal identity thing out. There aren’t clear answers much of the time, but it’s good to be able to find the humor in that. After you finish this one, if you want to explore the psychology underlying some of Pete’s probing a little further, I’d recommend checking out Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning too.

And Here’s the Kicker

By Mike Sacks

This is a cool book I heard about from another stand-up comic. It’s a collection of interviews with a bunch of different comedy writers. It’s a mish-mash of people who have worked in stand-up, sketch, tv, film, magazines, and books. The blend of perspectives is informative in a way that just reading/listening to stand-up comics isn’t. It’s worth checking out, even if you have no aspirations as a screenwriter, essay humorist, or novelist. If you are interested in any of those things or want to work on comedy projects in film, then I think this would be an excellent resource for you. Mike Sacks’ interview with Stephen Merchant (one of the co-creators of the British version of The Office who has gone on to work on several other excellent tv and film projects) is an absolute gold mine. That interview, in particular, has reaffirmed my creative aspirations on YouTube and has me quite excited about the future of various online media we now have access to.

Poking a Dead Frog

By Mike Sacks

This is another comedy writer interview anthology from Mike Sacks. For whatever reason, this one had a lot more stand-up comics in it. I won’t give it the same praise as And Here’s the Kicker, so if you have to pick one, start there. It’s still worth your time if you are a comedy devotee, though. If I were actively pursuing becoming a writer in television or film at this point in my life, I think there would have been quite a bit more valuable and imminently useful material for me in this book.

Sick in the head

By Judd Apatow

If you enjoyed the comedy interview books by Mike Sacks above, this is another one you should pick up. Add accomplished interviewer to Judd Apatow’s long list of comedy achievements. Apatow has had a massive influence on comedy over the past 20 years (duh). His films are the bees knees. Who doesn’t love Superbad. I re-watched Superbad a couple months ago…it’s so good. So good. Some of my favorite interviews in this one were with Harold Ramis, Key and Peele, Mike Nichols, Spike Jonze, and Maria Bamford. If you’re a comedy nerd or just a creative person looking for a little inspiration, these interviews might help you out. Also, take this entire interview project as a lesson in humility and the value of building relationships. Judd Apatow is genuinely interested in other creatives and their work. That shines through in the interviews. If you want to be successful as a creative, you need to collaborate with other creatives. That’s where the real juice is.

Mike Nichols: A Life

By Mark Harris

This was a reminder to me that I haven’t read (or rather, listened to) enough biographies. A well researched, in-depth biography shows you so many different facets of a human being. We’re so damn complicated! If you’re an aspiring artist who feels like you’re wandering around and lost, this will be so relatable. Mike Nichols wandered around through theater, improv, sketch, television, and film. He performed. He directed. He rubbed elbows with all sorts of other quirky people and artists. He started as an actor. One who self-admittedly fumbled around with that art somewhat unsuccessfully by his own standards. Yet that work as an actor built sensitivities into him that allowed him to carefully guide other actors as a director. He understood all too well the volatility of a vulnerable artists mind. At his best, he guided gently; he wasn’t controlling. Though, he could still be at his worst, as all of us pitiable humans can be. He knew that his primary job as a director was to make everyone on the set feel welcome and an important part of the team. He knew it was critical to help people feel at home when at work and whenever he violated this rule, the art suffered. His story is rich with successes and failures. If you’re at the top of your game or down in a gutter, you’ll be able to find something of value in this book. It’s about a full life. Also, some cocaine. And benzodiazepines. And horses.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate

By Stewart Lee

If you are struggling as an aspiring stand-up comic, this book may be your new Bible. There was so much to relate to in here. Stand-up is a peculiar art form. I am confident that it is an art. I will argue endlessly with anyone who thinks that it isn’t. You are wrong. Still, it is weirder in many ways compared to other art forms. I’ll grant you that much. It’s funny because Stewart Lee seems to think that many of his experiences in the alternative stand-up scene in Britain were unique. He makes some comments about alt-comics in New York being hack. I don’t have any stake in such turf wars as I’ve been trying to battle my way through learning this art in the grand ole’ towns of Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio. Yet, so much of what he recounted felt perfectly familiar based on things I’ve seen and done. There are so many comedy microcosms that have popped up all over America at this point. It seems like every major city, along with many smaller ones, have stand-up scenes with accompanying Facebook groups organizing every type of show under the sun. Maybe the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is truly unique, but I think it’s just as possible that similar activities are happening all over the place nowadays. I’ve since watched/listened to two of the three stand-up specials Mr. Lee recounts and comments on in this book. He’s very different from what I’m used to seeing in American comedy. He comments on his plodding, repetitive, caustic style quite a bit throughout the book. Ultimately, I like his work, and I think I’ve learned some important lessons to carry forward into the future. I feel like I’m rambling now. If you’re a stand-up comic and you know the struggle to express yourself on stage, read this book. If you aren’t a stand-up comic, honestly, I don’t know why the hell you would read this. You’re weird.

Yes Please

By Amy Poehler

I love Parks and Rec. It is superior to The Office in my opinion. I know most of America disagrees with me, and I don’t care. I’ve made peace with the possibility of being hated by the majority of the country for my taste in comedy. I also understand this is a tenuous stance to take as an obscure stand-up comic, but I’m still rollin’ with it. Parks and Rec was my introduction to Amy Poehler (my life consisted of stuffing my nose in books and dunking my head in a swimming pool during her SNL years). Amy is very funny and very interesting. I like reading about comedians who come up through improv as opposed to stand-up. Part of me strongly wishes I would have tried out for the school improv team in college. I didn’t have any time between the swimming and the books, but I was fascinated when I went to performances by Don’t Tell Anna at Xavier. I wish I had the tool kit of a seasoned improviser. Anyway, if you enjoy Amy Poehler’s television work, you ought to like this book. It’s another one I encourage taking in as an audiobook. An excellent chapter includes a dialogue between Amy and Parks and Rec co-creator Michael Schur about how they approached making the show. Amy gets more personal in helpful ways as well. She has some insightful thoughts on how to issue a proper apology. As someone who has never been divorced, I think her chapter on divorce will come in handy if I ever have to walk that path. She has some valuable perspective on life in your 30’s and 40’s that I wish I would have read when I was 22. Would’ve probably saved me some anxiety. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have been mature enough to get it. Who knows. Listen to Amy. She knows things.

How to talk dirty and influence people

By Lenny Bruce

Ready for me to ramble? I’m gonna ramble here. Steam of consciousness, here we go. I’m not sure how much of Lenny Bruce’s autobiography I can trust. Read Norm Macdonald’s memoir listed below to see how things can get murky. I have fact-checked none of this. Here’s Lenny Bruce’s Wikipedia page for some context. Still, this book could be useful if you’re a comic even if you just take it at face value. There are stories about Bruce dressing up as a woman in WWII to get out of the Navy. Nice little satirical bit there. And he wasn’t even a comic yet. Over the years I’ve heard lots of comics talk about how modern comedians are just copying stuff Lenny Bruce already did. There’s nothing new under the sun, we’re all just recycling his premises in fresh contexts. Whether or not it’s fair to give that much credit to Bruce alone is debatable, and I don’t have the knowledge to debate it. Art is never pure originality at this point. Humans have existed for too long for that to be the case. Art is more a reminder of meta-principles in the modern context. We’re always re-discovering ourselves as humans. We have a hard time paying attention to and fully understanding our past, so we teach it to ourselves through a more painful process in our particular context. Our culture tends to degrade in predictable ways due to our stubborn human frailties, and thus we get recurring cycles of similar jokes taking the culture apart. Anyway, there were many recognizable bits in this book. Bruce talked about how patients don’t feel like they have gotten their money’s worth if the doctor doesn’t prescribe anything - which is a fundamental problem America still can’t get over when it comes to our reckless faith in pills and surgical interventions to attack problems better solved with simpler behavior changes (see my online crusade on YouTube). He talked about the problems of antibiotic resistance (something we still refuse to deal with culturally) and the long lists of side effects for medications. He talked about how marijuana isn’t as harmful as our more culturally condoned preference for alcohol. Bruce talks about becoming a door-to-door “preacher” for profit. He did this partially for practical reasons and partly as a critique of the religious institutions in America. His comedy called out organized religion in America for becoming a corporate money-making scam as opposed to serving any purpose of providing ethical guidance or service to improve people's lives. He discusses a bit about Jesus coming back and criticizing the Pope for hoarding wealth. He discusses Moses having the same criticism of the wealth of modern rabbis. “Any priest with more than one suit is by definition a hustler if there is anyone else in the world without a suit. So I decided to become a priest.” He mocked all these foibles in these religious people while simultaneously indulging in the same human frailties. In true comic fashion, Bruce didn’t stand above the targets of his mockery, he stood by them so that he wasn’t spared his own finger-wagging and scathing critique. Bruce critiques our willingness as Americans to depict terrible violence in our films and on television, yet we cower when it comes to discussing sex in any kind of healthy or straightforward way. Bruce was actually arrested under the charge that he had “aroused audiences prurient interests.” Basically, he was accused of making people too horny with his words about sex. Probably should have been a lot of rock n’ roll artists being arrested, right? Musicians always get off easy compared to comics. Whatever. I didn’t laugh much listening to this audiobook. I have a great appreciation for how much style has advanced in stand-up since Bruce’s time. You want me to laugh? You better wrap that old premise up in some fancy new style, baby! The writing and delivery are far more unique today. Joke structure is much more complex and surprising in original ways. Yet, the premises remain much the same. We’re all regurgitating old “hacky” premises in new colorful ways. I don’t know anything about music, but I’ve started reading a book by Michael Levitan called This is Your Brain on Music. He makes much the same argument - that there is limited ability to create original sounds and arrangements today if you really understand how music is made. Of course, if you’re a casual fan, you don’t care. Bruce addresses the idea that he is a “sick” or “offensive” comic very effectively in my opinion. He takes this apart by pointing out all the state-approved offensive things other comics frequently say on stage with impunity. He was performing at a time when it was perfectly acceptable to say awful things about disenfranchised groups. These jokes at the expense of the weak posed no threat to the prevailing culture and thus were not dangerous enough to get your run-of-the-mill court jester hauled in front of a judge for obscenity the way Bruce was. Bruce recounts a number of his trial appearances (and again, I didn’t fact check any of this and I’m not sure if he meant for these to be historical accounts or if they were just bits he was doing making fun of his trials) and in one such account, Jackie Gleason is depicted as having said on the witness stand (I’m paraphrasing), “Lenny Bruce attacks the fundamental structure of society, whereas all those other comics just attack it superficially.” Seems about right. Knowing what we now know about drug addiction, the recounting of his trial for heroin use is rough to listen to and sad for so many reasons. Bruce tries to be clever and maintain the upper hand in retelling his side of the story, but that’s all undermined rather tragically by the fact that he died of an overdose at age 40. I can relate to the isolation Bruce probably felt that could lead to substance abuse. He was clearly highly intelligent, confident, strong-willed, and approached fearlessness with his willingness to discuss societal taboos critically. That doesn’t make you a lot of friends. It’s easy to become the lonely, isolated comic on the road with nothing but your thoughts for comfort. Bruce discusses in the book how much of his joke writing came out of his internal monologues, how he was always silently talking to himself throughout his life. This led to him presenting his material in a stream of consciousness style. His performances stylistically had the feel of him simply thinking out loud. When your thoughts aren’t so comfortable, I can very much understand the appeal of using a little something to numb the thoughts away. I’ve worried about my own potential to go down such a path many times in my life. I don’t mean to be judgmental of Bruce. He did incredible things despite his shortcomings. I think that’s something we all have to strive for because we are all full of shortcomings. Still, I think it’s better to avoid using narcotics to get by in life. I understand why it happens. I’m not trying to judge it. What’s that annoying thing Christians say? Hate the sin, not the sinner? I don’t like the language exactly. Feels pretentious saying that. Still, I more or less begrudgingly agree with it.

Based on A True Story

By Norm MacDonald

I don’t think I understand Norm Macdonald. I don’t know that I ever will. This book is dark and funny, though. Dark in a very unobtrusive way. Funny in a sly and confusing way. I don’t know how to describe it properly. If you need a laugh, watch this video. Then read Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. Then read this book. Then if you wanna be a little more hopeful, read Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning. Cheers.

Shrill

By Lindy West

Do you like challenging yourself with opinions that differ from your own? If you’ve read this far down this page, I would think the answer would have to be yes. I first heard about Lindy West after Daniel Tosh got in trouble over some jokes that he told in response to a heckler. This was back when I was first starting stand-up. I was instinctively 100% on Tosh’s side. What right did anyone have to heckle an artist they disagree with during a show? I’m still very much a free speech advocate. Even awful speech. Even hate speech. I think freedom of speech means freedom of speech. You can’t protect your own right to speak if you try to take it away from others. Things can get very complex and nuanced, and I’m sure we could come up with some confusing and seemingly contradictory philosophical trolley problems that would argue the opposite. Still, I’m just not convinced that you can safely take free speech away from anyone. Now that I’ve made many of you hate me, I’d like to remind you that I’m recommending that you read Lindy West’s book. Her perspective is not some draconian censorship that seeks to rain hellfire on the white male comic. She has a lot of reasonable ideas to share. As she states at one point: “This fetishization of not censoring yourself…is bizarre…When did ‘not censoring yourself’ become a good thing? …In a way, comedy is censoring yourself-comedy is picking the right words to say to make people laugh.” Comedy is controlled chaos. As an artist, you have to take your audience into account when trying to channel that chaos properly. Her experience needs to be taken into account. I remember watching her debate Jim Norton on W. Kamau Bell’s show Totally Biased back when all of this happened, and what she had to say made enough of an impression on me that I sought out her book when I heard about it. I’m a free speech advocate. That doesn’t mean that I think everyone should say whatever the hell they want. Freedom of speech is a responsibility. If you don’t treat that responsibility with the respect that it deserves and use it to help people more than hurt, well, we might all end up in a bit of a hellish situation of our own making down the road.

Talking to Strangers

By Malcolm Gladwell

Before you read this book, you should consider reading these three reviews that I don’t entirely agree with (One, Two, Three). Don’t just take those reviews word for it though. You still ought to read/listen to this book. I vote for listening because Gladwell is very easy to listen to. Can you have a man-crush strictly on a voice? If so, I have a man-crush on Malcolm Gladwell’s voice. Sorry, not sorry. Also, be sure to listen to every episode of his podcast, Revisionist History. Anyway, Talking to Strangers engages on some topics critical to sustaining our social contract. Is it too dramatic to say that our democracy, our nation is in a bit of a pickle right now (The book was published in 2019. I listened to it in 2020). We’ve become strangers to everyone around us in a world that was supposed to be more connected. It’s confusing. It’s stressful. Trust is the bedrock for any functional society, and yet people lie all the time and we keep getting more and more paranoid about that. What to do, what to do. Is there any possible solution to this epistemological crisis? How do we navigate a post-truth world full of fake news? It might help if we start trying to talk to each other. Ya know, reaching out our hand in good faith? Try to understand? Or we could just burn it all to the ground. Whatever.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

By Reni Eddo-Lodge

If you’re a white folk like meself, this title may feel a little harsh when you first read it. Go ahead and lick your boo boo and stand back up. You’re fine. No one hurt you. You haven’t been wrongly imprisoned. No one attacked you on the street or tried to run you out of their neighborhood. You likely haven’t been rejected from a job, school, friendship, or romantic relationship because of your skin color (or maybe you have, sorry about that, sometimes life ain’t fair). Just chill. You read a title; your brain didn’t like it at first. That’s the point. You’ve just been challenged to reconsider some basic assumptions you have. How are you going to respond to that challenge? Are you going to be open-minded and try to grow, or are you going to pout like a wickle ickle baby toddler boy and go cry cry to mama and dada? I’m sorry for calling you names, but it is pretty childish how many of us “Caucasians” (or whatever you want to call our cultural category) respond when a black person tries to share some of the basic realities they experience in life and how they differ from our own. We seriously need to grow up and deal with our shit in a more mature fashion.

You Just Don’t Understand

By Deborah Tannen

This book was a revelation. I need to reread it. You need to read it and then reread it. It explains so much about how male and female social relationships and hierarchies differ. So much of what I had experienced in life made infinitely more sense to me. Men and women do not speak the same way. This changes from culture to culture, but there are real differences. This has to do with biology. It has to do with evolution and how that affects general trends in personality traits. Deborah Tannen explains how these biological and psychological differences manifest in language during social interactions. Don’t get frustrated by your confusion in trying to communicate with the opposite sex. Read this book so you can understand a little better.

The End of Gender

By Deborah Soh

Two Deborah’s back to back? We’re on a roll, son. There has been a lot of discussion about gender and sex issues in our culture that has built to a fever pitch in recent years. We’re all walking on eggshells a bit. We all bring our highly emotional and vulnerable relationship and sex experiences to those conversations, both consciously and subconsciously. It’s scary shit to talk about in the political arena. It’s confusing, too, because how the hell do you know what is going on in someone else’s head when it comes to such a personal experience? I was a biology minor in college, and I took several more general physiology, anatomy, and pathology courses as I went through dental school. What often seems absent from these public discussions of sex and gender is input from the biological sciences. That somehow became taboo. That’s weird to me. I don’t think we need to be ashamed of biology and biological differences. It just is. I agree that some heinous ideologies claiming biological validity have arisen throughout history, but the way to stop that from happening is not to hide the science under a rug. You have to openly discuss the science to debunk that bad science that people try to turn into propaganda for their own agenda. It’s pretty easy to disprove Nazism’s conception of a superior white race if you take a thorough look at our biological understanding of “race” in humans. It’s junk “science” to say otherwise. The bastardization of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” concept into the winner take all greed is good version of capitalist ideology is easy to dismiss if you understand natural selection from a broader perspective. If you cede scientific ground to people with bad ideas, you lose trust with many people. Science is really useful. It helps us get closer to many truths. You can’t just chuck that tool from your toolkit when it shows you something you disagree with. You have to figure out what that new knowledge means. What I’m trying to say is that before you go yelling something hateful at someone because of a difference of opinion on a gender or sex thing, take a deep breath and read this book. As far as we know, this gender and sex stuff isn’t something anyone has any control over, so getting mad at someone for their feelings and preferences in this arena feels a lot like this. Educate yourself on these issues. Realize it’s complicated. Listen to people you care about when they express confusion or questioning about sex and gender. Don’t judge. Seek professional guidance when necessary. Engage with multiple perspectives. Probably stay off Twitter. Good luck.

Between the World and Me

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

This book is political. If you care about understanding race relations in America, it feels like another must-read. I don’t know that I want to focus on the political implications of what Coates writes in this blurb, though. It’s just a beautiful book. Coates writes it as an extended letter to his son. It’s a wonderful expression of his experiences through life and how he has processed them. It’s intelligent. It’s emotional. It’s poetic. Coates has dabbled in poetry. His pursuit of poetry performance in college reminded me of my first ventures into stand-up comedy during dental school. I could also heavily relate to his frustrations with our overly bureaucratic and repressive education system and his yearning for freer exploration of new frontiers of thought. Reading books like this can feel uneasy if you’re white. Imagine what it feels like to read if you’re black. To relive all the indignities and historical pain. That pain has to be more visceral and worse than any unease I feel. What’s astonishing is that Coates, much like James Baldwin, is able to reach through that pain and extend an olive branch. He recognizes how racism destroys the humanity of both black and white people, how when white people live the racist lie, when they chase the fictional “dream” Coates references throughout the book, they (we) manage to burn ourselves and inflict suffering on ourselves as well. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking, “I’m not racist. I don’t need to pay attention to this.” then I would strongly suggest paying attention to this. This is Coates's attempt to connect with you, to share his unique experience of the world. He has valuable insights to offer. You’ll grow stronger knowing what he knows.

Words that Work

By Frank Luntz

“It’s not what you say. It’s what people hear.” This quote is the most incredible distillation of everything you need to know about human communication. I’ve never exactly been a social butterfly. Getting people interested in what I had to say has been a lifelong struggle for me. My reflex was to take refuge in communicating silently with the authors of books. I was always writing little notes and reactions in my books in school. In my senior year of high school, I got a subscription to Newsweek magazine and did the same with those articles throughout college. Makes for a fun little time capsule to remind me about how angry I was all the time back then. I was fascinated that some people would actually listen to me when I started doing stand-up comedy. Then, of course, I was told by other comedians early on that I’m likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. Maybe they were kidding. Not sure. As a natural introvert who gets very excited about obscure ideas, sharing those ideas well has never been my strong suit. Stand-up has helped with that. Having to communicate with patients as a healthcare provider has helped with that. Whether you already consider yourself a talented speaker/writer or you feel like a buffoon who clams up when anyone so much as says hello, this book can help you. It can take your understanding of effective communication to another level. You may have amazing things to say. It won’t matter if no one hears it.

Blink

By Malcolm Gladwell

I think of this book as Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Daniel Kahneman’s work that led to Thinking, Fast and Slow (although, being a savvy journalist and author, Gladwell did get his book out first). A lot is going on unconsciously that determines the course of our lives. We can try to deny that on the conscious level, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Gladwell has a hell of a knack for illustrating concepts with relevant stories. Listening to his books and podcast, Revisionist History, is also just plain pleasant. Man has a voice for radio if there ever was one.

The Giants of Philosophy:

Jean-Paul Sartre

Read by Charlton Heston for the Audio Classics Series

I still haven’t read many sources from the existentialist school of philosophy, but I’m always into what I can garner from second or third-party sources. I wrote about this audio-book a bit in this blog post. It was a good one—the audio-book. I’ll let you be the judge of my blog post.

Republic

By Plato

I first read Plato’s allegory of the cave when I was a senior in high school, and I instantly related it to the film The Matrix, and it was like my young mind had a little revelatory orgasm. It’s a pretty banal observation in retrospect, but it felt radical at the time. Hegel would rehash a similar process to much praise and adulation centuries later with his thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis dialectic. Ditto for Thomas Kuhn reinventing the wheel in coining his scientific paradigm shift terminology. Plato is still worth reading simply to realize how timeless many human struggles are. Yes, he’s an old dead white guy or whatever. Yes, you ought to be reading other authors and philosophers from other cultures. Still, there’s a lot to like about what the Greeks were up to. One of the lines that has stuck with me since my freshman year intro to philosophy course: “Tell me: Is a doctor in the precise sense…a money-maker or someone who treats the sick? Tell me about the one who is really a doctor.”

Leviathan

By Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes keeps it 100. Human beings can be mean as shit to each other if we don’t have anything to stop us. His idea of human nature is essentially what’s depicted in The Purge filmography. I had always tended to think the best of people growing up. I was pretty damn sheltered. Hobbes made me ask some harder questions I hadn’t considered all that closely before. That tends to happen when you read books. You get deep into someone else’s perspective, and you have to find a way to reconcile it with your own. Who has this right? Inevitably, both of you hold a partial truth. You can only each get closer to the whole truth by engaging in honest discussion and debate. Hobbes kicks off Leviathan with a series of definitions of human emotions, which is pretty interesting. I wasn’t yet doing stand up when I read it my sophomore year of college, but I took note of his definition of laughter: “Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter, and is caused either by some sudden act of their own that pleaseth them, or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves, who are forced to keep themselves in their own favour by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity. For great minds one of the proper works is to help and free others from scorn, and compare themselves only with the most able.” Boom, roasted.

Of Paradise & Power

By Robert Kagan

Read this after watching Team America: World Police. I grew up in the bubble that was suburban America in the ’90s. It made it easy to develop a rather naïve view of human nature. This is a reasonable counterbalance to that. Humans are complicated. We’re not all good, and we’re not all bad. We’re incredibly powerful, and how we exercise that power is consequential. We have to make difficult choices, oftentimes between options that both have very negative consequences. That’s rough. Still, you can’t be naïve and think that you can pass on making the choice. This book examines that through the lens of modern America’s relationship with Europe, foreign policy, and whatnot.

The 48 Laws of Power

By Robert Greene

Again, don’t be naïve. The world can be a very nasty place. Playing innocent isn’t just intellectually and emotionally dishonest; it can be downright dangerous both you yourself and others. Don’t understand that? That likely means you haven’t been put in a situation in which someone more powerful than you is trying to force you to do something terribly unethical. The only way to stand your ground is to have some power of your own to defend yourself with. I don’t agree whole-heartedly with Robert Greene’s advice, but you’ll have a better understanding of power dynamics after reading this book. You don’t have to read a work like this from a cynical perspective. It can be useful to people striving to improve the world, not just those seeking to conquer it or sow destruction.

Theological-Political Treatise

By Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza was my favorite philosopher I read in college. He might still be my favorite philosopher. The Theological-Political Treatise is Spinoza’s historical analysis of the Bible. There weren’t many people doing that kind of thing back in his day. That was the sort of work that could get you killed. Since reading Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, I want to double back and reread Spinoza because I think the two would be informative if read in parallel. Spinoza was one of the people pulling abstract ideas out of the Bible that would be used as the foundation for democratic societies. That’s right in Peterson’s wheelhouse and why he is so concerned with people undermining our religious myths these days. Peterson is worried we might “saw off vital tree branches” that are upholding our democracies. Spinoza helped abstract out some of those tree branches.

Political Treatise

By Baruch Spinoza

I think one of the reasons I was so attracted to Spinoza’s thought when I read him in college was that he was so unflinching in his assessment of human nature, of human psychology. He understood that we are fundamentally irrational and superstitious. All the Enlightenment philosophers who thought that mankind would be ruled by rationality and logic one day were way off. Spinoza nailed it. Modern biology is on his side. Read Robert Sapolsky’s Behave. Read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. We aren’t rational. We are a bunch of confused, warring, sub-personalities driven by desires percolating in our hypothalamus and limbic system. If that last sentence seemed weird, go watch some Jordan Peterson lectures on YouTube in which he tries to explain Carl Jung’s work. Spinoza was onto these ideas a couple hundred years before Jung, albeit from a different perspective and in a less sophisticated way. Cut the guy a break; psychoanalysis wasn’t a thing yet. There are so many interesting ideas to explore in Spinoza’s work. The Political Treatise is actually an unfinished work; he died young. Spinoza was arguing that the illusion of some kind of democracy is the most stable form of government given human irrationality and superstitions. I still haven’t found a better argument, and I thoroughly admire his honesty in admitting that it is all simply a beneficial illusion. If I’ve piqued your interest, here’s a blog post I wrote as a bit of a love letter to the ideas Spinoza stirred up in me years ago.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

By Edmund Burke

I read Burke for the first time my junior year of college. I had been trending more and more liberally for several years. I am quite open to new ideas, and having been raised in a rather stifling and conservative intellectual environment, my philosophy, literature, and history courses in college (and to some degree high school) had up to this point pushed me to look down upon many of the conservative values I’d been ensconced in for much of my life. Burke’s political philosophy is eminently practical above all else. My interests in science and economics no doubt reinforced my interest in his ideas. Clearly, something had gone horribly wrong with the French Revolution, what with all the guillotining and so forth. Edmund Burke has some thoughts as to what that may have been, and those thoughts are relevant to those of us with overly ambitious plans for social revolution these days. Change is gradual. Change is hard. If you want to understand how to really change the world, forget revolution. Start reading books like Atomic Habits by James Clear and Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. You need to understand human psychology. You need to get a handle on how behavior depends more on emotions than logic. You need some quality self-help guidelines. Then it’s time to get moving. You can do it.

On Liberty and other writings

By John Stuart Mill, edited by Stefan Collini

When it comes to ethics, I more or less consider myself a utilitarian. However, I disagree with using happiness as the correct measure of well-being. I would substitute meaning as the proper metric. One of these days, I’ll get around to writing a blog post about the details as to why and I’ll link it here. You can read Mill’s Utilitarianism here. Seriously, if you read some of these old dead white guys, you’ll find that they had some good ideas. I’m not trying to romanticize history. There is plenty that is regrettable and not worth emulating. Still, these men are not the pure villains some political commentators would prefer to paint them as. There’s wisdom in their words that was hard fought for over a long period of time. We don’t want to go casually burning these books because parts of them miss the mark.

The Federalist

By Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

You know how everyone on both “sides” of the political spectrum likes to bark stupidly about what the “Founding Fathers” had to say? Instead of taking cues from the cable news brand tailor-made to exploit your Big 5 Personality Trait tendencies, why not read the source documents yourself?

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

By Jurgen Habermas

Fun fact: The first time I encountered the French word “Bourgeois” was in 7th grade when I had to recite a story from a book called “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.” I mispronounced it “bore-gee-us,” and I’m not sure my teacher ever corrected me. I also have a vivid memory of being at St. Dominic (the local school where the “speech contest” was held), telling my mom that I didn’t want to do the speech in front of anyone else because it made me nervous. I’ve always been very logical, and I used the rock-solid objection, “When am I ever going to need to be able to give a speech to anyone in real life?” The following year for the same speech contest, I was selected to write my own original speech. I wrote it as a humor piece about how much I didn't particularly appreciate getting braces. Now I’m a dentist who does stand-up comedy. I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like if it didn’t involve getting up in front of strangers and talking. Life’s weird. It’s always important to be challenged to grow. Anyway, read this book if you’re concerned with saving democracy and free speech, etc.…

Isn’t it wonderful when patients say “Yes”

By Dr. Paul Homoly

I had to throw one in there for any dentists who may be reading this. This book is written by a dentist who understands the massive role emotions play in our profession. Meeting your patient on an emotional level is critical to providing the care they want and need. Dr. Homoly wrote this book back in 2001, but many of its lessons are timeless for dental care professionals.

Range

By David Epstein

I listened to Range as an audio-book. I liked it a lot. It’s been a while, but from what I can remember, the gist is that you need to experience many different things in life to create a unique niche. If you hyper specialize too early, there is a lot that you will miss. Even if you specialize, you need to get out and wander around and experiment to open your eyes to new possibilities. Sometimes your natural abilities don’t line up neatly with your natural interests. Broadening your exposure to new ideas and experiences increases the chances of crossover. You want to find or create areas of work where you lie near the top of the Pareto distribution. That often happens when your interests coincide with your abilities because you feel motivated and engaged. I know I’m missing a lot of what was in this book, but that’s a lesson for me to take better notes in the future. If you are struggling to find a new direction in your life, this is a worthwhile read. There are lessons and strategies in here to help you find your new path.

Smart People Should Build Things

by Andrew Yang

If you’re reading this, you probably know that Andrew Yang ran for President of the United States. He was popular for discussing the benefits of a universal basic income. I’m on the fence about UBI - I think it has potential, but there are plenty of possible negative outcomes from such a policy too. I haven’t spent enough time studying it to give a fully formed opinion yet. Why bring that up? Well, Andrew Yang wrote this book all about how the smartest people in America are not fulfilling their potential because we have all the wrong incentives in place (see the behavioral economics books Freakonomics, Nudge, and Thinking, Fast and Slow above if you want to learn about incentives). Yang went to Brown University. That’s an Ivy League university. The best of the best in the world, right? The problem, according to Yang, is that we take all of those hyperintelligent people and we funnel them into a very limited subset of professions. If you look at the statistics Yang reports, somewhere around 50% of Ivy League grads go into either finance, consulting, law, or medicine. Should we be devoting 50% of our most impressive brainpower in the country to these professions? Yang argues not. He argues we are losing out on critical innovation. He points out that, as an individual trying to make his or her way in the world, such high profile, low-risk professions are the obvious safe choice. Who wouldn’t want to be an Ivy League grad lawyer married to an Ivy League grad doctor having future Ivy League babies, right? The problem is that what is incentivized as safe and worthwhile on the individual level may not be so safe for the long-term health of the United States as a whole. This country needs smart people to build new, innovative things. We can’t just tread water. As a dentist, I know this intimately when it comes to health care. We aren’t making a lot of progress on improving health in America, and I don’t think educating more dentists or doctors would move the needle very much. We need our smartest people to step up and take risks to try to make our country better in creative ways. That’s what I’m trying to do with everything I’m writing online and all the videos I’m making over on my YouTube channel. What I’m saying may get me fired from my safe job. It’s unorthodox. My life might fall apart and all the years and years of work I put in to have a sustainable career may go completely out the window. That sounds like a terrible risk, but I think it would be far worse to not speak up about the issues I’m seeing. Remaining silent is far more damaging to countless people. I’m taking an entrepreneurial risk. I’m taking a risk to test the limits of free speech. I’m taking creative risks. I’m trying to build something. How does any of that relate to UBI? Well, one of the reasons I’m taking these risks now is that I’ve managed to save a small amount of money over the years and get my student loans a little more under control. If I lose my career now, it would be very painful, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic to the point I’d be homeless. I would have a reasonable chance of recovery. Having that ability to take creative risks depends on not being buried in debt or living paycheck to paycheck in a job that takes up all of your time. If UBI unlocks dormant creativity in people who otherwise are under too much stress to think straight, then it could be a brilliant idea. The trouble is that UBI doesn’t really incentivize anything in itself. The motivation has to come from within. You have to have a burning desire to create and do things. You have to have the courage to risk a part of yourself out in the world, to have your work of art judged by others. I think most people are born with such desires and come into the world with a fair bit of blind/naive courage as children. Then our culture manages to beat the creativity and courage out of us and turn us into drones who only believe we are capable of being a cog at some stagnant corporation. So, for UBI to work, we need cultural change. We need encouragement. Andrew Yang wrote about how our best and brightest need to build things because that is the world he has experienced. Those are the people he rubbed elbows with. I think America needs all of its citizens to build things. You don’t have to build a giant company out of some little start-up in your garage. You do need to strive every day to try to make the world around you just a little bit better. That’s how we rebuild America day after day, brick by brick. Things fall apart. Entropy is built into the fabric of our universe. As humans, we have a wild ability to reorganize our surroundings and make them more hospitable to life. I’ve rambled far too much. Read this book. Use your talents. Don’t let anyone tell you you aren’t smart. You’re smart enough. You can build something. That’s better than nothing. Even if it falls apart and blasts a hole in your wall, you learned something. Pick it up, reassemble, experiment, move forward, etc. I promise I wasn’t drunk when I wrote this.

Blue Ocean Strategy

By W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

It’s been a minute since I listened to this audio-book, but it is all about finding a unique niche from what I recall. You need to find a way to provide value to people in a novel way. Most people follow existing trends. They chase the newest gold rush. If you want to find the real gold, you need to venture into the unknown yourself and figure out something no one else has. You need to innovate. You need to be an entrepreneur. If you’re the first one to get there, you don’t have any competition. You’ve uniquely positioned yourself to provide value that no one else can. This book was another kick in the pants for me to embrace the diversity of my own interests and showcase them instead of hiding them under a rock. Do you know anyone else who loves philosophy and performs stand-up comedy? Who has a perverse interest in economic theory and the psychology of behavior change and wants to apply that knowledge to improving healthcare? Who also greatly enjoys photography and has ambitions to get into voice acting and teaching at some point? Welcome to my niche. This is anotherlazymillennial.com.