podcast

The Best of 2022: Neil Pasricha winds and wades through wandering wisdoms

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Can you believe it?

We started 3 Books back on March 31, 2018 with the goal of counting down the 1000 most formative books in the world. We said we would hang out on the exact minute of every single new moon and every single full moon for nearly 15 straight years until we collected all 1000 of them. We set the intention of making this show an ‘intrinsically-motivated journey’ and pledged to doing it with no ads, no sponsors, no commercials, and no interruptions. To help guide ourselves we started collecting Values like no book shame, no book guilt, quit more to read more, and the books are the hero.

For the nearly five years we’ve been hanging out I have to say this journey has felt like a warm ray of sun in my life. I hope it’s felt the same for you. My goal with this annual “Best Of” is simply to roll back through the year together and pick out moments that made us pause, ponder, and savor.

Thank you for being a 3 Booker and spending time with this incredible community of book lovers spread across the world. If you’re reading this, I love you more than lots.

Let’s stop to reflect and then keep enjoying the ride.

The Best of 2022: Neil Pasricha winds and wades through wandering wisdoms

 
 
 
 
 
 

Chapter 117: Ajay Agrawal and Gina Buonaguro on puzzling pasts and portending possibilities

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On the heels of launching my latest book, Our Book of Awesome, I’m enjoying the fellowship of two authors in my life — one of whom I met 22 years ago when I was in my final year at Queen’s.

Bounding into my life at the time came a young professor named Ajay Agrawal. And I mean bounding! He was cold calling left, right and center, dancing around the room, and extremely theatrical. As you listen to him you’ll see why I found him so captivating and clairvoyant. 

Professor Ajay Agrawal has won Professor of the Year seven times! He’s like Canada’s Adam Grant. He is the co-author of the bestselling book, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, named one of the best tech books of the year by Forbes, The New York Times and The Economist. His latest book has just come out and it is called, Power and Prediction, also co-authored with Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

Ajay is a tenured professor at Rotman, a research associate at The National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founder of the Creative Destruction Lab, a not-for-profit program that helps start-ups launch, and co-founder of Next Canada dedicated to the development and training of young entrepreneurs. He is also a recent winner of the Order of Canada which is the highest civilian honor that Canada awards.

Over the years I've gotten a chance to meet Ajay's truly lovely partner in life: Gina Buonaguro. And, guess what? She's a writer too! Ajay focuses on the future. Gina focuses on the past. Gina is originally from New Jersey but has been living in Toronto for many years. She started at Villanova University, all the way up to the University of British Columbia on a Fullbright Scholarship.

Gina’s written dozens of articles, won five writing grants and is the co-author of six historical fiction books, including her latest, The Virgins of Venice.

You could not think of two books which are more different: The Virgins of Venice and Power and Prediction. One is a 500 year old historical fiction saga taking place in a convent with sexy nuns. And the other a deep dive into AI.

I was intrigued by the relationship dynamics between them, what their books really say, and how their writing processes work. So I invited them, together, to come on 3 Books. I also asked Leslie to join the conversation. 

The four of us sat down in Gina and Ajay’s living room and we discussed questions like: what is the fate of girls in 16th century Venice, what does it mean for a city to be excommunicated, why has Uber been so revolutionary, what is the point vs systems solution in AI, how can books be shared and read together, what is an Untouchable Day, how can we think about living a little more intentionally, how does AI manipulate us today and it goes on and on and on.

This is a wide ranging conversation that I think you will truly enjoy.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 117 now…

Chapter 117: Ajay Agrawal and Gina Buonaguro on puzzling pasts and portending possibilities

 

What You'll Learn:

  • What does it mean for a city to be excommunicated?

  • Why has Uber been so revolutionary?

  • What is a point solution vs a system solution in AI?

  • What is holding AI back?

  • How can books be shared and read together?

  • What is a writer’s group?

  • What is the power of reading aloud to our kids?

  • How can we bring in more quiet into our busy urban lives?

  • What is an untouchable day?

  • How can we live intentionally?

  • How does AI manipulate us?

  • What are the challenges of raising kids in a tech centric world?

  • Why are young people finding social interactions so awkward these days?

  • What is the Chinese solution to screen time?

  • What is the tension between ideology and critical thinking?

  • How can we encourage more critical thinking? 

  • How can we temper cancel culture?

  • What is the role of school today?

Notable quotes from AJAY & GINA:

“Luck comes to the prepared.” Gina Buonaguro #3bookspodcast

“We are a species that is far more simple-minded than we thought.” Ajay Agrawal #3bookspodcast

“Skyrocketing, anxiety and depression can all be pretty much tied almost perfectly with the rise of social media and, and smartphones.” Gina Buonaguro #3bookspodcast

“We need to help kids build a confidence and trust in their instincts and in their mind. Ajay Agrawal #3bookspodcast

“We must develop the muscle of using technology as a tool but not let it take over.” Ajay Agrawal #3bookspodcast

“Ideology has just shut down critical thinking in so many important parts of society.” Ajay Agrawal #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 116: Bryan Stevenson on handling haunting histories with heart and hope

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I got a phone call at 1-833-READ-A-LOT from Austin Wong in Oregon telling me we had to get Bryan Stevenson on 3 Books. I looked into Austin’s request and came upon Bryan's incredible bestseller Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. I listened to his 10-million plus hit TED Talk "We need to talk about an injustice" and approached the Equal Justice Initiative to have him on as a guest.

We finally found a time to have the conversation way down in Austin, Texas, where we were both scheduled to speak at the same conference. He came to my hotel room at 7am -- 7am! -- and we had a wonderful exchange in front of floor-to-ceiling glass windows with the sun brightening the Texas hills outside our window. I then went downstairs two hours later and watched Bryan captivate a room full of 700 people and get the loudest standing O I may have ever heard. This is a man on a mission. And his work and his words are so vital.

Bryan Stevenson has been representing capital defendants and death row prisoners in the deep South since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1989 he has been Executive Director and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private non profit law organization that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the US. In practice? Bryan and his team take on the cases nobody else wants: litigating on behalf of condemned prisoners, people sentenced to die in prison at age 13, disabled prisoners sentenced to death, people wrongly convicted or charged, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct.

Bryan has won the McArthur Fellowship "Genius" Award, multiple Human Rights Awards, and the ACLU National Medal of Liberty. He has a degree from Harvard Law and more honorary degrees than anyone I’ve interviewed before including from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn and it goes on and on.

His book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is a captivating must-read with 23,268 reviews on Amazon as of right now. It's been turned into a movie starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.

Perhaps interesting: all 3 of Bryan’s formative books are fiction. Buckle up for a heart-shaking conversation around hope, justice, slavery, capital punishment, truth, trust and much, much more.

It's an honor to help amplify the incredible work of Bryan Stevenson. Thank you to Bryan, Caitlin, McCarthy Tétrault, and the Equal Justice Initiative for helping to make this conversation happen.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 116 now…

Chapter 116: Bryan stevenson on handling haunting histories with heart and hope

 

What You'll Learn:

  • What is the Equal Justice Initiative?

  • How can cultural institutions help redress the wrongs of oppression?

  • What is strategic rest?

  • What was it like being in a segregated school?

  • What is the true power of reading?

  • What does it mean to be sentenced to die in prison?

  • What is freedom?

  • How is justice served by the law?

  • What is narrative work?

  • How can we begin to deal with true reconciliation?

  • Why must we speak of genocide in North America?

  • How has false narrative perpetuated racism?

  • Why does capitalism perpetuate racism?

  • Why is truth so essential?

  • What is the history of the death penalty?

  • What is the link between racial bias and the death penalty?

  • What is happening with the Supreme Court?

  • Why are fear and anger such powerful forces?

  • How can a book teach compassion?

  • How must we cultivate optimism?

  • Why is hope essential?

Notable quotes from bryan:

“In books there was this real kind of a portal to a bigger world than I could see outside of my community.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“Wherever you live in the United States, you live in spaces where there is a history of racial injustice and it's created a pollution that compromises our ability to trust one another, to hear one another, to even see one another.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“We wrote this Declaration of Independence that's envied all over the world, but we didn't apply those concepts to indigenous people.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“The real evil of American slavery wasn't the involuntary servitude, it wasn't the forced labor, it wasn't the brutality of, and the violence of bondage. Those were horrific. But the greatest evil for me was the narrative we created to justify enslavement.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“Anyone who believes that the pursuit of wealth, money, profit, at all costs is going to be complicit in supporting and creating systems that oppress, disfavor and abuse people who are vulnerable.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“You gotta tell the truth before you get to the reconciliation. Cause if you skip the truth, you're gonna do something performative and meaningless that doesn't actually move the society forward.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“I don't think, if you understand our history of the violence of slavery and the horror of lynching and the degradation of segregation, that you could accept a death penalty that disproportionately impacts people of color.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

“I think hope is our superpower. It's the thing that will get us to stand up when people say, sit down and it's the thing that will get us to speak when people say, be quiet.” Bryan Stevenson #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 115: Gabor Maté targets toxic triggers to transcend trauma

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Let’s flash back to Budapest Hungary in 1944 where a little baby boy named Gabor lay crying in his crib. He wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. His mother called the doctor who said, “All my Jewish babies are crying”.

Nazis had taken over the country and killed Gabor’s grandparents in Auschwitz. Gabor’s dad was put into forced labor and his aunt was missing. Today we understand that Gabor was experiencing trauma through his mother’s stress.

His father thankfully returned after the war and when he was 12 years old, the family moved to Canada. Gabor went to the University of British Columbia before becoming a high school english teacher through the 60s and early 70s and then returned to university to become a doctor in 1977. Gabor spent over 20 years practicing family and palliative care medicine in the downtown Eastside of Vancouver -- a neighbourhood with one of the world's highest concentrations of drug addiction.

Today Gabor is the bestselling author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction, When the Body Says No, Scattered Minds, Hold Onto Your Kids, and his brand new New York Times bestseller The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic World.

I bought the book when it came out from Caversham Booksellers, which is North America’s largest mental health bookstore and located in downtown Toronto. They told me Gabor had been by many times and proudly had all his books in the front window. I cracked it open and couldn't stop reading. Gabor is entrancing, passionate, and wise and I was thrilled to sit down with him at Penguin Random House headquarters during the Canadian leg of his international book tour.

We discuss: play, love, Jordan Peterson, innocence, attachment parenting, Winnie the Pooh, father-son relationships, identifying and healing from trauma, curiosity and living, shifting attitudes, formative books, and much, much more…

This conversation is a journey I don't think you'll soon forget. I find myself thinking about it nearly every day.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 115 now…

Chapter 115: Gabor Maté targets toxic triggers to transcend trauma

 

What You'll Learn:

  • Why is loss of innocence so poignant?

  • Why should we not give up play?

  • How is love manifested?

  • What is attachment parenting?

  • Why is our culture so toxic?

  • Why must we let kids manifest the full range of their emotions?

  • How do you develop a strong father/son relationship?

  • What is trauma?

  • How can we begin healing from trauma?

  • How can we build better connections with our children?

  • How can we make sure we are meeting our children’s needs?

  • How do we balance curiosity and life?

  • How should we choose to live?

  • How can we learn to shift our attitudes towards events?

Notable quotes from GABOR:

“What if love is actually a quality that's in us. Not because we carry it consciously, but it is part of who we are. And what if that love is actually a manifestation of some truth in the world.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Love is a manifestation of the universe.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Human needs are not arbitrary. They're not culturally determined. They're eternal, determined by evolution.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“We build a culture based on economic imperatives not on the needs of human beings and this is toxic.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“For the child it's a loss not to see the parent the whole day.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Don't deprive the child of your company when you don't like their behavior.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“One of the developmental needs of children is to be able to experience all their emotions, including anger.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Anger is a boundary protection. It's necessary.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Trauma is not the terrible things that happened, but the wound that one sustains as a result.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Give the child latitude to experience all their emotions. Don't make their emotions wrong. But don't cater to them necessarily either.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Children were never meant to be brought up in isolated nuclear families.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“We all have a bit of Don Quixote in us.  We don't always see reality.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

“Acceptance doesn't mean that you tolerate or put up with bad stuff. It means that you accept that right now this is how it is and the question is what do I wish to do about it, which is where your attitude comes in.” Gabor Maté #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 114: Light Watkins on Mexico's marvels, meditation myths, and mental mastery

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Five years ago I was invited down to Brooklyn to speak at an event called The Shine Movement. It was an intriguing soul-refueling combination of meditation, drumming, giving, and a few words by me. The event attracted a fascinating subculture of people and I felt slightly entranced meeting the man and mind behind it all: Light Watkins.

Light Watkins is someone I consider a master of spirit and mind. He grew up in Montgomery, Alabama (with siblings Candy, Trey, and Dusty!) in the 70s and 80s, traveled the world as a fashion model, and then worked as one of the most prominent yoga instructors in LA (including teaching future princesses). Deepak Chopra calls his meditation insights "simple and profound." Today Light has taught meditation to thousands of people from all walks of life in retreats and workshops around the world. He is the author of three bestselling books: The Inner Gym, Bliss More, and Knowing Where to Look. And each morning since 2016, Light has been sending out a daily dose of inspiration email.

Light also hosts The Light Watkins Show, a podcast that shares inspiring stories of regular people who’ve found their purpose in life.

Not only is Light incredibly prolific but he is also a wandering spirit -- literally. He lives out of a backpack. Not a giant hiking backpack, either! A normal backpack. I was grateful to catch up to him from Mexico City to finally reconnect many years later. I think you'll love this conversation and his 3 most formative books.

We discuss: fostering community, happiness as a muscle, learning to meditate, leading with your heart, managing resistance, and much, much more…

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 114 now…

Chapter 114: Light watkins on Mexico's marvels, meditation myths, and mental mastery

 

What You'll Learn:

  • What is the Shine Movement?

  • How do you cultivate community?

  • Why is consistency so critical to personal growth?

  • Why does criticism not work?

  • How can you establish a meditation practice?

  • Why are more people not leaning towards meditation?

  • Why is passion in teaching so critical?

  • Why is happiness a muscle?

  • How can we learn to master our minds?

  • How can meditation help with sleep?

  • When is the optimal time to meditate?

  • What does it mean to live out of a backpack?

  • Why is Mexico City so special?

  • What does it mean to seek to understand?

  • Why should you begin with the end in mind?

  • Why is name change controversial in the West?

  • How did Light get his name?

  • How can we let our heart guide us?

  • How can we manage resistance?

  • How can we manage overwhelm and guarantee rest?

  • How can we learn to prioritize?

Notable quotes from LIght:

“You have to enrol people in your vision and you have to be passionate about that thing that you're trying to do, enough so that people also feel like they're a part of it." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"It's a consistency game. You have to just be consistent with whatever you're trying to build. And I understood that from building my meditation practice, and before that from building my yoga practice. You just have to show up.” Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"I recognize that my mission here on earth is to leave the planet better, more inspired than I found it." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"I have to always remind myself that the bitter pill of criticism goes down a lot easier if you've given the pill of praise enough." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"If you cannot explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"Happiness is like a muscle that you have to cultivate.” Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

On meditation - "What you ultimately want is you want to de-excite the mind, and the irony is the way you de-excite the mind is by allowing the mind to do what it does, which is to roam around and wander and get lost and get distracted." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"Most of us try to be understood, but we discount the importance of seeking to understand." Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

"It's not about getting good at meditation, it's about using meditation to get good at life.” Light Watkins #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 113: Alie Ward oozes originality over odysseys and ologies

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Photo credit: Justin Zangerle

Oh hey. 

It’s the person who just dropped their phone on the bus right when the driver hit the gas and now the phone’s sliding across the sandy floor all the way to the back… Neil. Neil Pasricha. And now it is finally time for our much-anticipated 3 Books chapter with the one and only ... Alie Ward.

Alie is the Sacramento-raised youngest of 3 girls who grew up in the 80s listening to DadWard deliver the morning news from the local radio station. She spent her childhood playing with bugs and just being told by her parents, “Come back by sundown and don’t get tetanus.”

Alie fell in love with science and studied science and film in college. An unlikely but prophetic mix. She went on to win an Emmy for being CBS’s correspondent for Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation with Mo Rocco and was a host for Did I Mention Invention? on CW. She’s a consulting producer for the Barack and Michelle Obama-produced Netflix show Ada Twist Scientist and appears in the Netflix science series Brainchild and the science channel’s How to Build Everything. 

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! The piece de resistance of her science-and-performing ways is, of course, her jaw-droppingly great podcast, Ologies. Everybody I've suggested this podcast to just loves it. There's a reason it's the number one science podcast in the world! What are ... ologies? There are so many! There’s Myrmecology which is about ants, there’s Scorpiology which is about scorpions, there’s Etymology which is about word origins and, of course, there's one on Awesomeology about gratitude and happiness starring yours truly. 

Now it’s time to pull up your petrified stump and get ready to talk about: self-help books, starting a podcast, skunk predators, Life lists, Cervidology, infectious energy, confidence versus arrogance, visioning, the Galápagos Islands, fostering community, building trust, formative books and much, much more...

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 113 now…

Chapter 113: ALIE WARD oozes originality over odysseys and ologies

 

What You'll Learn:

  • Are self-help books formulaic? 

  • What is independence?

  • What are east vs west coast podcast styles?

  • What is Alie’s advice for starting a podcast?

  • What is a life list?

  • What is cervidology?

  • Why should we never be embarrassed about our favorite books?

  • Does the Law of Attraction work?

  • How can we make our energies more infectious?

  • What is the fine line between confidence and arrogance?

  • What is the etymology of confidence?

  • What is the power of ‘show up like you belong’?

  • Why is visioning so important?

  • Why do reviews matter in the podcast world?

  • How can we make people care about others?

  • What is wrong with the news?

  • What makes the Galapagos so special?

  • How can we foster community?

  • How can we build trust?

Notable quotes from Alie:

“Capitalism says, ‘You’ve got a thing? Now make it bigger. Got a thing? Make it bigger!” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Default to authenticity all the time. It’s like rock climbing. Those little crags are how people get you. It’s how you show up as you are. And that’s how you offer something nobody else does.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Show up as who you are and you will be irreplaceable.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

"By shifting from "I don't belong here" to "I do belong here and I can do it" you start taking chances and putting yourself in places that you otherwise wouldn't." Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Confidence doesn’t mean I'm better than anyone else. It just means I have faith in myself that I can do it.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Show up like you belong and have fun.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“This book made me go from thinking about what I hadn’t done to what I wanted to do.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Living in that space of like having butterflies for a goal will get you so much farther.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“All the wrong people tend to have imposter syndrome.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Writing it down and being honest with yourself is such a first step to getting there because you have to admit that that your desire is real or else you will stop yourself from going for it.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“News is a business and it is for money. We are not fed what we need. We're fed what makes money." Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“The more context I can give people on the minutiae that they might have taken for granted, the more I feel like I can center us all into this human experience of being a living creature on the planet.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

"I'm just like this weird lady on the internet, who's like, everyone's dad.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

“Let yourself be crazy about someone and always be friends first.” Alie Ward #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 112: Katie Mack on cultivating curiosity and contemplating the cosmos

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I want to make you dizzy.

I want to make you look up into the sky and comprehend, maybe for the first time, the darkness that lies beyond the evanescent wisp of the atmosphere, the endless depths of the cosmos, a desolation by degrees

These two lines begin an incredible poem called “Disorientation”... by Katie Mack.

Did you feel dizzy reading it? I did. I do!

What is the universe? Where did it come from? What was here before it? How long has it lasted? How long will it last? How could it ... end?

Do you remember being a little kid and it maybe suddenly hitting you that there was this overwhelming gigantic thing we were a part of that was almost too vast to even comprehend? I feel like a lot of us have that feeling. Sort of reminds me of this super-short clip from Annie Hall where 8-year old Alvy Singer is taken to the doctor by his mother because the vastness of the cosmos has suddenly hit him.

Why isn't he doing his homework? "What's the point?" he concludes.

That's one reaction. But if you're Katie Mack growing up in California you run the other way. You pick up a book called A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and continue chasing these near-impossible questions and just never, never stop. Katie kept asking these questions through her undergrad in Physics at CalTech and her PhD in Astrophysics from Princeton before she launched into even more fascinating work like, no big deal, building a dark matter detector.

Today Dr Katie Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist who studies a range of questions in cosmology -- i.e., the study of the universe from beginning to end. Her wonderful, recent bestselling book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) is a New York Times bestseller and goes through a very helpful history of the universe before exploring a number of different ways the universe might end. At times complex, but often (thankfully) accessible, reading her book is like hanging out with a really, really smart friend, illuminating what is going on up there.

Since June 2022, Katie is the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. This is a relatively new institute based in Waterloo, Canada, and it's where Katie does research on dark matter and the early universe and engages in conversations, like the one we are having today, to make physics more accessible to the general public. So: she does podcasts! And: she's extremely viral! I highly recommend you join the 426,367 people who currently follow her on Twitter @AstroKatie.

Let's talk big puzzles, time, malleable fabric, wordplay, living on mars, the possibility of alien life, "colonizing" space, Katie’s 3 most formative books, and much, much more.

This is a mind expanding conversation. You'll hear me playing catch-up the whole time. Not sure I ever caught up, or ever will, but Katie is a gift to the world.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 112 now…

Chapter 112: Katie Mack on cultivating curiosity and contemplating the cosmos

 

What You'll Learn:

  • Where are we in the universe?

  • What is the true definition of time?

  • How does time work?

  • Do calendars reflect time?

  • How do we define the future?

  • Is there other life in the universe?

  • What is a back-up book?

  • Why is the term colonization wrong for space?

  • Is astrology a science?

  • What is the smallest scale of measurement in the universe?

  • What is the largest scale of measurement in the universe?

  • What is the unobservable universe?

Notable quotes from katie:

“Generally in physics, we think of time as one part of that coordinate system that we use when we're talking about how things occur in the universe.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“How you move through space affects how you move through time. And that's part of relativity.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“There's something like 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe as far as we know. So, the idea that we're the only place in the universe where life has arisen seems just shockingly unrealistic to me.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“I think exploring the universe is a great idea for a lot of reasons, but as a way to have a backup plan for humanity I think it's a terrible idea.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“I love the idea that you can create an emotion in another person just by the way that you're using words.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“There are things about the universe, about the largest scales and the smallest scales, that are so contradictory to our daily experience, that they seem absurd to us.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

“There are things that we can all understand and appreciate about the universe. We can all look into the night sky and wonder and we can all try to get some glimpse of this beautiful universe we live in.” @astrokatie #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 111: Austin Kleon draws on doodling to design and dream

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Buckle up!

Today we are flying down to hot, hot Austin, Texas where we’re going to grab three chairs on the grackle-filled patio of Mi Madre’s restaurant and order ourselves some enchiladas and #0 breakfast tacos before having lunch with the wise and wonderful Austin Kleon.

Austin in Austin — a treat! Austin Kleon is “a writer who draws” and the author of a number of my favorite books including Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. His books are kalaidoscopic collage-patchwork delights, focus on themes of creativity, are massive bestsellers and have sold over a million copies.

Austin has a wonderful well of wisdom at AustinKleon.com which is home to his new great Substack community and his endlessly arresting Friday Newsletter. (One of the few newsletters I open and read religiously every week!)

We are going to talk about: writer and reader energies, the Japanese word tsundoku, violence in America, dumb questions, the power of doodling, nature as a metaphor, car problems, Austin Kleon’s 3 most formative books and much, much more.

Order yourself a taco, grab a margarita, put on a tank top and some shades, and come hang out with us down on the teal metal-grid table on the patio of Mi Madre’s Mexican Restaurant in east Austin, Texas.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 111 now…

Chapter 111: Austin Kleon draws on doodling to design and dream

What You'll Learn:

  • Why should you order a #0 Taco at Mi Madre?

  • How do writer and reader energies complement each other?

  • Why should unread piles not stress you out?

  • What is the intersection of reading and travel?

  • Why is an awakening to misinformation crucial to growing up?

  • Why is violence so prominent in the US?

  • What is ‘home’?

  • Why should we all have ‘a room of one’s own’?

  • What is the difference between lies and bullshit?

  • What is real freedom?

  • What’s wrong with the car?

  • Why are dumb questions the best?

  • How do we manage giving our kids freedom?

  • How does mentorship shape you?

  • Why should you use your hands when you create art?

  • Why is teaching like a quilt?

  • What is the power of doodling and why should we all draw?

  • How does keeping a diary promote writing?

  • What is the true power of a walk?

  • How can social media be used … productively?

  • Why is nature the best metaphor?

  • What is the optimal tension for creativity and life?

  • Why should we all take public transit on a regular basis?

Notable quotes from AUSTIN:

“People get real guilty about their unread book piles. To me it's a win for possibility.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Books are time travel devices.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Home is where you come in the door and you're accepted.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Bullshit can be toxic, but it can be benign. Lies are direct manipulation.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Freedom should be your ability to move freely throughout your community, to be free from harm, to stay healthy, to live your life and to make connections.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“I actually think dumb questions are the better questions. The dumber your questions the better you can get to the heart of the situation.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Every teacher is up against impossible odds. To be a teacher is already to enter into a kind of, if not outright poverty, a poverty of respect and compensation.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“If you can write words and draw pictures, you've got two different modes of communication at your disposal.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

When people start drawing, they draw what they think should be there rather than what's there.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

About Thoreau and Sedaris: “What they did for me is show me a repeatable way of working indefinitely. You set up systems in which you're never devoid of material because you're constantly, constantly writing.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“I use social media as a public notebook.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“As a writer, you're looking for metaphors all the time and nature just ends up being like a rich one.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“If most Americans wanted to live in the real world, they should take the bus on the other side of town. That's the real world.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Write the book you want to read.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“Stay open to the possibility that you might be the worst judge of your own work.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

“You put the energy you can into the work, but then it takes the energy of other people to unlock it.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast 

“Make lots of stuff and put it in the world and see what happens.” Austin Kleon #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 110: Kevin Kelly on quashing quandaries with curiosity and creativity

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Photo Credit: Christopher Michel

Kevin Kelly is a man of many titles.

Krista Tippett calls him a ‘philosopher technologist’, Tim Ferriss calls him ‘the world’s most interesting man’, and Stephen J. Dubner says simply, “If I was the Queen, I would want Kevin Kelly on my Privy Council.”

Kevin Kelly is the first person — ever! — to be hired online. When? 1983. For what job? A fascinating one! We’re going to talk about it. He dropped out of college after a year to spend ten years backpacking around Asia. (His photos have just been released in a wonderful paperweight-dwarfing book called Vanishing Asia.) In the same breath he might drop stories of spending time with the Amish just as easily as chatting with Google’s founders in the late 90s. His online home, kk.org, is a fountain of deeply insightful and wise blog posts, such as, 1000 True Fans and his annual bits of birthday advice (which are coming out as a book next year!)

Kevin Kelly’s library

Kevin also edited The Whole Earth Catalog, founded The Hacker’s Conference, and is Co-chair of the Board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging long term thinking and which is, right now, building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years.

See why titles don’t really work with Kevin? I mean, sure, he calls himself a ‘packager of ideas’ and the Internet may know him best as ‘Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine’ (which he cofounded in 1993.) But he’s also written a series of prophetic bestsellers including: What Technology Wants (2010) and The Inevitable (2016). That last book came out six years ago but it lays out the future of technology over the next thirty. Clear and clairvoyant, Kevin’s words helped me feel more positive about the omnipresent magnetic pull of technology we’re all breathing in today. I would recommend it especially if, like me, you’re occasionally prone to digging your heels in the dirt, throwing your smartphone out the window, and screaming “I don’t wanna!”

Kevin Kelly is a kind, wise, and optimistic finger-pointer. And, unlike most mystics, fortune tellers, and futurists, he’s got a long track record of being right.

We are very lucky to have Kevin Kelly join us on 3 Books.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 110 now…

Chapter 110: Kevin Kelly on quashing quandaries with curiosity and creativity

 

What You'll Learn:

  • What makes for a good podcast conversation?

  • What are the different types of vacation?

  • How might you plan a vacation to optimize learning?

  • Why are books a long-term technology?

  • What does technology want?

  • How might AI change us?

  • How do you define optimism?

  • How is technology both the problem and the solution?

  • How do we learn to think longer term?

  • What are recursive loops and how do they help explain the world?

  • Why should we strive to engage in infinite games for growth?

  • Why is population a concern?

Notable quotes from kevin:

“Maximization and optimization revolve around learning.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“We travel to be confronted with otherness.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“The Whole Earth Catalog gave me permission to invent my life.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Books want to take you to this thinking space, this literary space, which is a place that you can't get to in ordinary life.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Technology, like wood, has grains, and we have to work with these grains to get better results.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“We  humans have a very peculiar  relationship with technology in that we are both the parent and the child, the master and the servant, the creator and the creator at the same time.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Optimism is a greater focus on opportunities rather than the problems.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“I believe that problems are actually the path to progress. We get to progress through problems because they open up possibilities that we had not even thought of before.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“If we want to make a world that is friendly to us it will not happen inadvertently. We have to actually deliberately envision it first in order to make it.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“We need brakes to steer us but you just want to make sure that the engine is stronger than the brakes.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Problems are in the service of progress.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

“Every really important person that I admire reads more than I do.” Kevin Kelly #3bookspodcast

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Chapter 109: Rebecca the Sex Educator on embracing erotic exploration

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What is your erotic potential? And how might you ... increase it? Online erotica? Mindful masturbation? Solo nude mirror practices? The answer is all of the above and much, much more.

To help guide us through the erotic bramblebush (erotic bramblebush? erotic bramblebush!) we are very lucky to sit down with the wise and wonderful Rebecca S. Kay.

Rebecca is a Sex Educator with over ten years of experience. She's been a sexual advisor at Planned Parenthood, the Sexual Education Centre at the University of Toronto and the Brandon Centre in London, England. She has studied Surrogate Partner Therapy with UK based ICASA and is currently obtaining her certification in Somatic Sex Education and Sexological Bodywork through the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education.

Rebecca's mission is to break down sexual stigma and build up people's relationships with their bodies, sexualities, and each other. She is guided by the belief that pleasure is an essential element of this work and that nurturing intimacy takes courage and practice. Rebecca helps clients connect with their bodies and sharpen their skills through mindfulness, sexological bodywork, psychology, and neuroscience. She's at www.rebeccaskay.com and I recommend checking out her work and offerings.

With Rebecca's warmth, curiosity, and judgement-free guidance she creates such a rare and supportive open space to talk about sexuality. And yet! Despite this safe space creating ability ... I was, uh, extremely nervous. Extremely. As you'll hear. So it was growth for me and I hope it can be growth for you, too. Sexuality is so stigmatized and maybe this type of conversation helps us move a little bit down the path.

My wife Leslie also teaches sexual ed to seventh and eighth grade students and she (kindly!) joins for this conversation. So, here we go! Are you ready? Let's bravely jump into this wonderful conversation with Rebecca S. Kay.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 109 now…

Chapter 109: rebecca the sex educator on embracing erotic exploration

What You'll Learn:

  • How should we teach young people about sex?

  • Why is there still so much stigma around sex?

  • What is planned parenthood?

  • What is somatic sex education?

  • What is erotic potential?

  • What is the state of sex education today?

  • Why is it so important to teach kids about body parts?

  • How are we shaped by our first sexual experiences?

  • How can we help kids explore their sexuality safely?

  • What is the value of reading erotic writing?

  • How can we use self compassion to love our bodies more?

  • How do we reconcile the paradox of coupledom and erotic desire?

  • How can we maintain eroticism in a long term committed relationship?

  • What is the difference between love and desire?

  • Why is eroticism in marriage fairly new as a concept?

  • What’s the state of marriage today?

  • Why are monogamy and non monogamy not binary?

  • What is a peak erotic experience?

  • What is mindful masturbation?

  • What is a surrogate partner?

  • What is sexological bodywork?

  • What is the future of sex coaching?

Notable quotes from rebecca:

“In Western society, we prioritize our minds, cerebral thinking, and I think we have lost touch with the wisdom in our bodies.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“We need to make sure young people have access to  trusted forums in which to have conversations about sex.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“It's a bit of a stretch to love your body because the vested interest is in making you uncomfortable about your body, because then you'll need to spend money to feel better about your body.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“Capitalism wants to make you feel bad about how you look.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“We don't see representation of aging bodies or disabled bodies being sexual. So we desexualize these people.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“If you have partners and lovers in your life who can offer affirmation, it can be very valuable, but it's also essential to find ways within yourself too.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“You need to make this conscious choice to weave eroticism and flirtation and appreciation and gratitude for your partner into the day to day.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“I think incorporating ritual around the ending of relationships is a beautiful thing in the same way that we incorporate ritual around creating it.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“Fantasies can offer windows into your erotic self.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

“It all starts with practicing love which I see as acceptance of yourself. It is where it all starts.” Rebecca the Sex Educator #3bookspodcast

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