“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” — René Descartes
Cal and I discuss the rise of the Coronavirus, how it is has made us more reflective and books that we are turning to during this interesting time. We wanted to give the quarantined folks some content to listen to as well. Hope everyone is staying safe.
I finally finished Robert Greene's masterpiece The 48 Laws of Power. It is not only the best business books I have read, it could easily be classified as a psychology book, history book or a political theory book. Like the book itself, Robert Greene is a diverse man.
"Could we have done any better if he'd left us in charge of our own lives? Would we have become any more or any less?"
Our collective memory certainly understands the atrocities committed by the Nazis in concentration camps but the Soviet prison system became a well fed death machine for decades after WWII. Solzhenitsyn emerges from the prison system as an oracle to proclaim and preach the dangers of socialism performed by the Soviets.
Cal and I discuss the movie, Ad Astra directed by James Gray starring Brad Pitt which is currently in theaters. It is a existential and personal journey that Roy McBride takes through our solar system in search for his father. We decided to have a slightly different topic than books, depending on how this goes we might start a sub-series on movie reviews. If you haven't seen the movie just know we will spoil it.
Hope everyone enjoys the discussion Cal and I have about Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari in his follow up book to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. We decided a book of this magnitude needed an audio format.
I was recently indulging in some really good podcasts and wanted to follow up my previous podcast post from about a year ago with a new one. Podcasts are a great resource for self-education while I am on the road or working out which is more time than I can devote to quietly reading a book in my favorite chair. I hope these will be considered options to add to your subscription list.
Jefferson was a complicated, contradictory figure who has been praised by liberals and conservatives alike throughout the American epoch. He is known as the philosopher and architect of the Declaration of Independence – the arbiter of liberty and proponent of egalitarianism.
“cancer’s life is a recapitulation of the body’s life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own. To confront cancer is to encounter a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than even we are.”
"The next major structural development in human intelligence is likely to be a partnership between intelligent humans and intelligent machines."
