More To Learn

Steve Glaveski is an author, a podcaster, an entrepreneur, and a mate. We've both interviewed eachother a couple of times for our respective podcasts, and in this episode we go deep on Steve's reading journey.

We talk about WHY Steve reads, some reasons NOT to read, books that have changed Steve's life, books Steve would prescribe if he was to create a cirriculum for a university course based on non-fiction books, and how lockdowns shifted Steve's perspective on life.

PLUS - For a little extra fun hidden in the show notes, here's a song I recorded for the last interview I did with Steve, after he recorded a song based on our podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA8gmbek8iw

Steve's Website: https://www.steveglaveski.com/

Previous podcast episodes with Steve:

WYWL #300: https://www.whatyouwilllearn.com/author-interview/steve-glaveski/

WYWL #183: https://www.whatyouwilllearn.com/author-interview/steveglaveski/

FS #410: https://www.nofilter.media/posts/410-the-sh-t-they-never-taught-you-with-adam-jones-and-adam-ashton

Steph Clarke is a facilitator, futurist, and learning designer. She is also the host of the (recently retired) Steph's Business Bookshelf podcast, where she's shared the three big ideas from over 200 non-fiction books in 15 minutes or less.

I met Steph back in 2019 when her podcast was just getting started. Both being book lovers and now book podcasters, we had a lot in common! Coincidentally Steph's Business Bookshelf and What You Will Learn came to an end around the same time... so I wanted to chat to Steph to hear more about how she made the decision to hang up the mic.

Steph's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-clarke

Steph's Business Bookshelf podcast: https://www.stephsbusinessbookshelf.com/

28 Thursdays: https://www.28thursdays.com/

Steph's personal website: https://www.stephclarke.com/

I'm interviewing famous economist Tyler Cowen so I wanted to brush up on a few economic concepts. I studied economics in high school and at university, but a lot of the textbook stuff seemed a little crusty and irrelevant. Thankfully, I've read some great books that have taken the concepts from the classroom and applied them to the real world.

In this episode, I look at incentives, and specifically the difference between monetary incentives and non-monetary incentives. Drawing from three great economics books on this topic, I've pulled together the best ideas and stories from:

• Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (where he differentiates "social norms" from "market norms")
• Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (where they differentiate "moral incentives" from "economic incentives"
• Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen (where he explain the "dirty dishes" parable and the "car salesperson" parable).

Then I tie them together and apply these to some other real world scenarios - how you can think about applying incentives to housework, business, management, and dating.

Adam Jones is back behind the mic. After 7 years of reading books and podcasting together on What You Will Learn, Adam joins me to talk about:

• how he got into reading in the first place,
• what differentiates a bad book from a good book from an awesome book,
• face-slapper / jaw-dropper books we've each read since our previous podscast came to a close

At the end of the first full month of the new podcast, I thought I'd do a bit of a round up of:

• some podcast updates and highlights (and what's to come)
• my favourite 5-star review of the month
• a listener audio question
• the books I read in July 2023 (some I finished, some in progress, some abandonned)

Get in touch at any time - email me at [email protected], or better yet, head to https://moretolearnpod.com/contact

In January I had my first child, I transformed overnight from an "adult" to a "parent".

I thought there would be some overnight lightning bolt type of change.. but I don't know if there was. Perhaps there was a gradual change over the weeks and months head. In some ways everything has changed, in some ways nothing has changed.

One quiet afternoon recently, as I was sitting in the dark room in the rocking chair trying to get little Bella off to sleep, I got a little introspective. I started thinking about how life has changed this year and what broader lessons I've learned.

These are not 6 lessons on how to look after a newborn, but broader more philosophical lessons that have changed how I view the world and (hopefully) things you can apply to your life as well.

Cass Sunstein is the author of HEAPS of great books, and is officially the most cited legal scholar in the world.

Some of his books include "Nudge" (co-authored with Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler), "Noise" (co-authored with Oliver Sibony and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman), and "Sludge" (not co-authored, that ones all Cass!).

His newest book, launching August 1st 2023, is Decisions About Decisions. Whether we know it or not, we all have systems or frameworks we use to make decisions, so this book get a little meta on deciding how to decide. Will we use a rule? Will we delegate the decisiont to someone else? Will we outsource it to our standards and routines? It really got me going to see a 2x2 Matrix where he'd defined and explained a whole range of different second-order decisions, then grouped them into when and why we should use each one!

Grab a copy of Decisions About Decisions by Cass Sunstein: https://www.amazon.com/Decisions-about-Practical-Reason-Ordinary/dp/1009400460/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1J8IDPX34BUMQ&keywords=decisions+about+decisions&qid=1689656673&sprefix=decisions+about+decis%2Caps%2C628&sr=8-1

The book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein has been described as "the most impactful book on behavioural economics". The core concepts in the book have found the way into large corporations and even entire political teams have been formed called 'nudge units' to implement the ideas in the book.

The benefit I can offer you as someone who has read 500+ books and podcasted about 350+ of them is that I can bring different ideas from different books together to add depth to the arguments.

So rather than just sharing the ideas from Nudge, I'm going to mix it together with the ideas from Sludge by Cass Sunstein (not sure why Thaler didn't get the co-author gig on that one!) and pull out the common threads.

After defining and explaining what "nudge" and "sludge" are, along with some real-world examples, I bring together a nice little 2x2 matrix that compares how nudge and sludge can be used for GOOD... or for EVIL.

This episode was sparked by a conversation Adam Jones and I had over a brunch. Adam Jones said he'd been battling through, trying to read Seduction by Robert Greene, and we tried to rank Robert Greene's books in order from our favourite to our least favourite.

As our mutual favourite author of all time, even a 'bad' Robert Greene book is still better than most other books out there... but this is our unfiltered views on how they stack up against each other.

Check out Robert Greene at his website: https://powerseductionandwar.com/books/

Over the weekend I went hunting for truffles. It was a bit of a guided tour where we were introduced to the background of the truffle farm and their philosophies, then we went out with a couple of dogs to go and sniff out some truffles that we'd use to cook up a delicious lunch.

While we were wandering around, I picked up on a few cool ideas or lessons that I thought could apply not just to truffle hunting, but to life more broadly. Using truffle hunting as a metaphor, here were 5 thoughts:

1. Don't be afraid to look stupid
2. Lying means you lose opportunities to learn
3. Trust The Dog
4. Cut out the rot before it spreads
5. Some truffles aren't worth harvesting