Kelsang Jampa: Guided Meditation at TEDxSarasota. Neuroscientist Sam Harris Selects 12 Books Everyone Should Read. By Maria Popova On an excellent recent episode of The Tim Ferriss Show — one of these nine podcasts for a fuller life — neuroscientist Sam Harris answered a listener’s question inquiring what books everyone should read.
As a lover of notable reading lists and an ardent admirer of Harris’s mind and work, I was thrilled to hear his recommendations — but as each one rolled by, it brought with it an ebbing anticipatory anxiety that he too might fall prey to male intellectuals’ tendency to extoll almost exclusively the work of other male intellectuals. (Look no further than Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reading list for evidence.) And indeed Harris did — the books he recommended on the show, however outstanding, were all by men. Complement with the reading lists of Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Carl Sagan, and Alan Turing, then revisit Harris on the paradox of meditation and subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show here. Top illustration by Marc Johns. Neil deGrasse Tyson Selects the Eight Books Every Intelligent Person on the Planet Should Read. By Maria Popova In December of 2011, Neil deGrasse Tyson — champion of science, celebrator of the cosmic perspective, master of the soundbite — participated in Reddit’s series of public questions and answers.
One reader posed the following question: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” Adding to history’s notable reading lists — including those by Leo Tolstoy, Alan Turing, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Stewart Brand, and Carl Sagan — Tyson offers the following eight essentials, each followed by a short, and sometimes wry, statement about “how the book’s content influenced the behavior of people who shaped the western world”: Tyson adds: If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.
(What has driven it, evidently, is also the systematic exclusion of the female perspective. David Bowie’s Formative Reading List of 75 Favorite Books. Creativity is a combinatorial force — it rests on our ability to fuse, usually unconsciously, existing concepts, memories, bits of information, pieces of knowledge, and fragmentary impression into novel ideas that we call our own.
A mind of exceptional creativity, then, is a mind brimming with vibrantly diverse bits that can be fused together into a boundless array of possible combinations. One way to fully appreciate the power of such cross-disciplinary curiosity is to look at the intellectual diet of those we revere as geniuses, whatever their field of exceptional ability — take, for instance, the reading lists of Carl Sagan, Alan Turing, and Nick Cave. Naturally, I was thrilled to come across the itemized intellectual diet of one of the most celebrated creative icons in modern history, David Bowie. Here are Bowie’s booktrysts, in reverse chronological order: ↬ The Guardian ↬ Reddit.
A Helpful Guide to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others. When I’m Gone — Life Tips. When I’m Gone Death is always a surprise.
No one expects it. Not even terminal patients think they are going to die in a day or two. In a week, maybe. But only when this particular week is the next week. We are never ready. It was no different with my father. I had a father who was both firm and fun. He never told me he was going to die. I believe — actually I’m sure — he thought this should bring luck. And suddenly, the next year was over before it even started. My mother picked me up at school and we went to the hospital. Then, my father was once again a father to me. “Your dad asked me to give you this letter. The envelope read WHEN I’M GONE. Son, If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I didn’t want to tell you what was going to happen, I didn’t want to see you crying. Well, as you can see, I still have a lot to teach you.
I love you. Love, dad. PS: I didn’t write letters to your mom. He made me stop crying with his bad handwriting. PHILOSOPHY - Michel Foucault. Good Guy Keanu Reeves. Bookshelf: Jason Silva. 10 Books You Pretend to Have Read (And Why You Should Really Read Them) 100 Wonderful and Terrible Movies That Never Existed.