Detailed notes on long-form content I read/listened to starting 2025 → notes.
blogs & newsletters
Religion for the nonreligious – Wait But Why
A great piece that helps me zoom out and put my life into context. Humbling and freeing.
Howard Marks memos – Oaktree
Each memo underscores the importance of intellectual humility and second-order thinking.
What you’ll wish you’d known – Paul Graham
A reminder to take responsibility and get started.
Neuralink and the brain’s magical future – Wait But Why
Fantastic overview of the promise of brain-machine interfaces.
Morgan Housel’s Writing
Short posts on important topics like optimism, respect, happiness, and wealth (see a few examples here, here, and here)
How to get rich – Naval
On authenticity and comparative advantage.
Mental models – Farnam Street
A great overview of mental models, i.e. frameworks to understand the world.
A guide to using your career to help solve the world’s most pressing problems – 80,000 Hours
An overview of how to maximize your impact through your career from a utilitarian standpoint.
Concepts – Stratechery
Ben Thompson is one of my favorite writers on tech & strategy, and this page serves as a summary of his thinking.
Kurzgesagt videos (not quite long-form, but terrific nonetheless)
Well researched and succinct videos (awesome animation too) that explain complex topics while acknowledging the nuances.
The control group is out of control – Scott Alexander
How subjectivity and personal opinion seeps into science (and all human thought, probably).
Invisible asymptotes – Eugene Wei
An excellent read on identifying limitations that put a ceiling on long-term growth.
Varieties of argumentative experience – Scott Alexander
Essay on what makes for a good argument/debate.
books & podcasts
Same as Ever
On phenomenon that never change, because they are so intimately tied to human nature.
13 Necessary Virtues from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography
Timeless epithets for a virtuous life.
Man’s Search for Meaning
Autobiographical work of a psychologist and holocaust survivor on his outlook on life.
Meditations (Gregory Hays translation)
A reminder to focus on things you can control.
World After Capital
Personal and societal frameworks to grapple with the shifting scarcity from capital in the industrial age to attention in the digital age.
The Revolt of the Public
Ex-CIA analyst’s take on the potential implications of the internet and the resulting proliferation of information on the institution of representative democracy.
What’s Our Problem
“A self-help book for societies” – the book’s subtitle sums it up well. Focused on the gravitation of popular public discourse to the extreme and how to (re-)apply scientific principles to our societies.
Note: I’d recommend reading this book alongside The Revolt of the Public & World After Capital; they all tackle the causes, implications, manifestations, and solutions to information overload, a defining characteristic of early 21st century society.
Sapiens
A refreshing historian’s take on human nature. In an age of accelerating change, useful to remember things that stay (relatively) constant.
When Breath Becomes Air
An incredibly powerful memoir of a surgeon diagnosed with cancer. Disclaimer: You might cry (I know I did).
Enlightenment Now
A detailed overview of the rapid progress we’ve made as a species post-enlightenment (though, I disagree with some of the metrics used to measure progress)
The Hard Things about Hard Things
Honest and unfiltered take on leading and running a company. Love that it discusses failure and the struggle. No sugar coating here.
India after Gandhi
A well-researched book on India’s post-modern history. Helped me appreciate the work that goes into establishing and sustaining a democratic government.
Catalyst
Exploring big questions on decarbonization with an analytical lens, with climate tech industry veteran, Shayle Kann.
Acquired
Amazing podcast on technology acquisitions and IPOs. I love the founding stories and history that David & Ben surface and the excellent discussion that follows on business strategy and tech trends.
quotes
Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.
Marcus Aurelius
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence, and nothing too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
Maya Angelou
The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
Richard Feynman
If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable.
Kevin Kelly
If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
The 14th Dalai Lama
For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.
Alexander Rostov (A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles)
Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.
Paul Kalanithi
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka’ but ‘That’s funny…’
Isaac Asimov
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau