The Love + Money Anti-Library
A list of things from people way smarter than us. Updated Regularly.
We humans are a fallible bunch.
The Planning Fallacy. The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Availability bias. The Ego. The second law of thermodynamics more or less guarantees that there’s infinitely more ways to be wrong than right. So we think we’re better to embrace our fundamental wrongness and get on with the project of learning.
That’s why at Love + Money we don’t consider ourselves a Teaching Organisation, but rather a Learning Organisation. That’s what Always Beta means: being better tomorrow relies on us recognising that we’re all in beta today. That new facts and discoveries can change our minds, our opinions, and our plans. That’s what learning is. In fact, that’s what knowledge is: strong opinions, loosely held.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, madam?”
— Winston Churchill, maybe
Here’s a bunch of links to the things we like to read, watch and listen to.
Subscribe to:
Slow Boring. Matt Yglesias founded Vox.com and then left (along with Ezra Klein, a co-founder) to do his own substack. It’s heavy on US policy but his take on macroeconomics and common sense are pretty hard to beat. Unless you’re Tyler Cowan.
Conversations with Tyler. Self-described infovore, celebrated economist and ruthless podcast host Tyler Cowan has a genuinely crazy amount of knowledge on a wild array of things.
No Mercy/No Malice. Scott Galloway’s weekly diatribe is almost always worth reading for hot/thoughtful takes on the world of tech, business and brand.
fs.blog. Shane Parrish is like a more thoughtful, better structured, less spammy Tim Ferris. Also used to be the Canadian version of a CIA agent. His podcast is The Knowledge Project, but the blog is all about better decision making, mental modelling, and catering for human error.
The Economist. Hate capitalism? Do you, though? Or is it just that socialism is cool on Tinder? For something a little more right of centre that makes cents, try reading The Economist. You won’t explode into flames.
New World, Same Humans. Trends, technology and society by David Mattin (Trendwatching). As the title suggests, it’s about how tech can change our world without necessarily changing our nature.
Listen to:
Conversations with Tyler. I don’t think anyone humbles my intellect quite so much as this guy.
Pivot. Kara Swisher calls out Elon Musk and Scott Galloway makes bad stock predictions. 10000% better than it sounds.
Rationally Speaking. Julia Galef is a study in how to be intellectually humble and to control for our in-built irrationality.
Ezra Klein Show. Interviews with the founder of Vox, now moved to the NYT. Some of the best thinking-out-loud out there.
Waking Up with Sam Harris. If you can get past the hobby-horsing about identity politics and Islam, there’s some great discussions on here. Also famously hates Ezra Klein. #balance.
Today, Explained. Vox Media. Does what it says on the tin.
Pod Save the World. Ex Obma foreign policy staffers. It’s pretty weedsy and on the doveish side of the spectrum, but if you want to engage in geopolitics at all, it’s really worthwhile. Even if only to remind you how few black and white answers there are here.
The Weeds. Matt Yglesias still runs this, even though he’s left Vox. Again, really US-policy based, but they talk about other shit from time to time, and it’s always worth keeping an eye out.
Very Bad Wizards. A philosophy professor and a psych professor talk about ethics and philosophy and use heaps of dick jokes. Conversations are great, the hip hop is appalling.
Tim Ferriss Show. The world’s greatest self-optimiser. Watch out for the ads.
Hidden Brain. “Welcome to Hidden Brain, I’m Shankar Vedantam.” Humbling stuff about how our brains work.
Freakonomics Radio. The hidden side of everything.
Read:
About Humans
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer
Practical Wisdom by Barry Schwartz
Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
Rationality by Steven Pinker
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
The Last Word by Thomas Nagel
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Lying by Sam Harris
How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
Happy by Derren Brown
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Rationality by Stephen Pinker
All Life is Problem Solving by Karl Popper
Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper
The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer
About Societies
Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harare
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
What We Owe the Future by Will MacAskill
About Business
The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger
Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
The High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos (not getting an Amazon link for that, soz)
Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan
Measure What Matters by John Doer
The Essays of Warren Buffet
Recruiting by Ryan Breslow
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Traction by Gino Wickman
Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal
Zero to One by that dick Peter Theil (great book tho srsly)
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
About Everything Else
Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper
Numbers Don’t Lie by Vaclav Smil
The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Big Picture by Sean Carroll
Learn about:
We’ll update this as we go.
We’re always looking for new knowledge. If you have anything you want to add, or want to hear any of the other books we’d recommend, please hit us up. We’d love to share.