A weird thing in life is that everyone strives for a good life because they think it will make them happy. But what actually brings happiness is the contrast between what you have now and whatever you were just doing.

The best drink you will ever taste is a glass of tap water when you’re thirsty.

The best food you will ever eat is fast food when you’re starving.

The best massage you will ever feel is sitting on a couch after a long run.

The best sleep you will ever experience is when your newborn finally sleeps through the night.

This episode is about happiness, and the counterintuitive places it's often found. 

The knee-jerk way to set expectations is to anchor to what everyone else has right now. But imagine the tragedy of there being unbelievable progress throughout your life and you enjoy none of it because you expected all of it.  

This episode is all about expectations, and how the key to happiness in so many things in life is to aim low. 

Sometimes the best you can do when learning about any topic is to memorize a few short stories -- quick, direct, and to the point, that you're likely to remember forever.

This episode shares 15 short stories that have stuck with me, and helped me contextualize so many things in life, work, and investing.

One other note: I have a new book coming out this November. It's called Same as Ever, and you can pre-order it here:  http://amzn.to/41CHgKM

There are so many times in life where what you do is less important than how long you've been doing it for. 

It's true in careers. 

It's true in relationships. 

It's true in sports. 

And it's true with money. 

This episode is about compounding -- and how staying put, uninterrupted, is often the most overlooked skill. 

If you can explain something important in just a few words, it's a double win: You've probably found something that's obviously true, without needing further explanation or detail. And it's probably something you'll remember for a long time, easy to recall without having to memorize dozens of details. 

This podcast is a smattering of ideas that have been important and impactful to me, shared in as few words as I can manage. 

This episode has little to do with money. But in some ways it has everything to do with money. 

That's the riddle I want to unpack. 

I want to share a bunch of examples of what one field can teach us about another. 

What can we learn from biology that teaches us something about money?

What can we learn from physics that teaches us something about business? 

If you find something that is true in more than one field, you’ve probably uncovered something particularly important. The more fields it shows up in, the more likely it is to be a fundamental and recurring driver of how the world works.

One of the most complicated topics in money: How it impacts your family.

Your spouse.

Your kids. 

How do you avoid spoiling kids? 

How do you and your spouse learn to agree about the best way to spend? 

There are no easy answers -- but I try my best here, including sharing the letters I wrote to my kids when they were born. 

The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, “I can do whatever I want today.”

People want to become wealthier to make them happier. Happiness is a complicated subject because everyone’s different.  But if there’s a common denominator in happiness -- a universal fuel of joy -- it’s that people want to control their lives. 

The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays. 

There is no world where two equally smart and informed people should agree on the best way to save, spend, and invest money. 

Everyone is different. 

What you want might not be what I want.

What’s fun to you might be miserable to me.

Your family’s different from mine. Your job’s different from mine. You have different life experiences than I do, different role models, different risk tolerances and goals and social ambitions, work-life balance targets, career incentives, on and on.

One of the most important financial skills is figuring out what game you're playing, and playing it -- and only it. 

This episode covers a hard topic about money: What you want more than anything is everything you can't have.

Your brain doesn’t want stuff. It doesn’t even want new stuff. It wants to engage in the process and anticipation of getting new stuff. 

The change, not the amount, is what matters.

When it comes to happiness and money, it's not about how much you have. It's about the change in how much you have. 

Special cameo from Richard Nixon.