Medley 84: Tulip Fever, Canola Oil, Inner Game, and My Favorite Books of 2017
New Article : “The 12 Best Books I Read in 2017” It’s that time of year again! These are the 12 best books I read this year, to give you some ideas for your holiday reading (or next year’s list).
New Casts : This week on Nat Chat, Isaac Morehouse, the founder of Praxis, joined me to talk about replacing the traditional college system and how students can get any job they want. And on Made You Think, we dug into the Inner Game of Tennis, a fantastic book on how you can reach your peak performance (in anything) by letting go of conscious control.
Interview : And this week, I was on the MetaLearn podcast to talk about teaching yourself new skills, self-experimentation, entrepreneurship, and blog building.
A Small Ask : If you're doing any more holiday shopping on Amazon, clicking to Amazon through this link first will give me ~7% of the sale value of anything you purchase. It doesn't cost anything extra for you, and it's a great way to support my work if you've been enjoying it. You could also buy something from Perfect Keto, Kettle and Fire, or Four Sigmatic, which all give you discounts with the code "Think."
Canada is going to start selling marijuana in liquor stores in certain areas. I wonder if we’ll eventually see an integration like this in the US? It’d likely be easier to roll drugs like marijuana into the existing liquor infrastructure than to set up a new one.
I’ve been getting more aggressive with my knowledge capture, and I was pleased to find this article outlining how offloading our need to memorize things may actually help us understand them better, since it frees up our mental bandwidth.
Research is starting to confirm the suspicions that vegetable oils might be bad for you. According to this report, it’s linked to worsened memory, cognitive decline, and weight gain.
I met up with David Perell from the North Star podcast last week and really enjoyed his take on Naked Brands, how we’re shifting away from corporate “logo” brands to the more Casey Neistat, Tim Ferriss, Marie Forleo “naked brands.”
And for everyone saying that Bitcoin is the “next tulip craze,” that general idea may be true, but there never really was a tulip fever.
Have a great week!
Nat
P.S. This might be a long-shot, but if you’re in Richmond Virginia this week and want to grab a coffee, reply and let me know!