Wiser Than Yesterday

Wiser Than Yesterday

By Sam Harris & Nicolas VereeckeSociety & CultureEducationArtsBooksPhilosophy
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Wiser Than Yesterday episodes

  • NEURODIVERSITY - ADHD: Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain by Peter Shankman
    Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain

    By Peter Shankman

    In Faster Than Normal, Shankman shares his hard-won insights and daily hacks for making ADHD a secret weapon for living a full and deeply satisfying life. Both inspiring and practical, the book presents life rules, best practices, and simple but powerful ways to:

    Harness your creative energy to generate and execute your ideas

    Direct your hyperfocus to get things done
    Identify your pitfalls--and avoid them
    Streamline your daily routine to eliminate distractions
    Use apps and other tech innovations to free up your time and ener

    Filled with ingenious hacks and supportive self-care advice, this is the positive, practical book the ADHD community has long needed - and is also an invaluable handbook for anyone who's sick of feeling overwhelmed and wants to drive their faster-than-normal brain at maximum speed...without crashing.

    Takeaways
    • Focus on changing your brain chemistry first thing each day by doing an exercise.
    • Eliminate choice wherever possible. The less time you have to spend on creating decisions, the more time you can spend on things that matter.
    • Having an adequate sleep and eating well has a huge impact.
    • Host rating for 'Faster Than Normal'
      Nico

      Rating: 8/10

      Sam

      Rating: 9/10

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      You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

      39 min
    • Investing Recap
      Thoughts and Learnings in Investing
      • Everyone should be thinking about investing.
      • Every money decision you make is an investment decision.
      • All investments are broadly equal on the risk/reward spectrum.
      • Only actively make investment decisions when you have an edge.
      • Your investment strategy will depend on your situation (your age, tolerance for downturns, goals, etc.)
      • Compounding is key in investing and in life
      • Downturns are the price you pay for being invested.
      • Think positive-sum (put your money in positive-sum industries) - shorting!
      • List of Investing Books and Topics That We Have Read
        • Introduction to Investing
        • Talking To My Daughter About The Economy by Yanis Varoufakis
        • The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
        • The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous
        • NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), explained
        • Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 Into $100,000,000 by Jason Calacanis
        • The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment by Guy Spier
        • The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel
        • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson
        • What is Decentralized Finance or DeFi
        • Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market by Noah Horowitz
        • Nico's Top 3
          1. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
          2. The Psychology of Money
          3. The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment
          4. and The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

            #### Sam's Top 3

            1. The Psychology of Money
            2. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
            3. Talking To My Daughter About The Economy
            4. Subscribe!

              If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends!

              You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

              42 min
            5. Investing: Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market by Noah Horowitz
              Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market

              By Noah Horowitz

              Art today is defined by its relationship to money as never before. Prices of living artists' works have been driven to unprecedented heights, conventional boundaries within the art world have collapsed, and artists now think ever more strategically about how to advance their careers. Artists no longer simply make art, but package, sell, and brand it.

              Noah Horowitz exposes the inner workings of the contemporary art market, explaining how this unique economy came to be, how it works, and where it's headed. He takes a unique look at the globalization of the art world and the changing face of the business, offering the clearest analysis yet of how investors speculate in the market and how emerging art forms such as video and installation have been drawn into the commercial sphere.

              Takeaways

              Art has the potential to be an important as a stored value. But there are problems with the current market such as:

              • Hard/expensive to verify authenticity
              • Expensive to store/handle/transact
              • Illiquid market
              • Difficult price discovery
              • Artist does not profit from secondary sales
              • Subscribe!

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                36 min
              • Investing: What is Decentralized Finance or DeFi
                Decentralized Finance or DeFi

                Decentralized Finance offers financial instruments without relying on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks. Instead, it uses smart contracts on a blockchain. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, trade cryptocurrencies, insure against risks, and earn interest in savings-like accounts. DeFi uses a layered architecture and highly composable building blocks. Some applications promote high interest rates but are subject to high risk.

                In this episode, Nico and Sam thoroughly explained what is DeFi all about, the importance and risks involved, how it works and so much more!

                Subscribe!

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                You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

                55 min
              • Investing: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson
                The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

                By Eric Jorgenson

                Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn.

                So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?

                Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn’t a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval’s own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

                Takeaways
                • Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
                • Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
                • Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
                • Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.
                • Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
                • Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
                • Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
                • Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence, you're accountable to your output, as opposed to your input -- that's the dream.
                • The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.
                • Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible.
                • Host rating for 'The Almanack of Naval Ravikant'
                  Nico

                  Rating: 9/10

                  Sam

                  Rating: 8.5/10

                  Subscribe!

                  If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends!

                  You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

                  53 min
                • Investing: The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel
                  The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

                  By Morgan Housel

                  Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.

                  Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.

                  In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

                  Takeaways
                  • Focus on being reasonable with money over being rational
                  • Getting wealthy is not the same staying wealthy
                  • Compounding is the key ingredient. Compounding helps investors build wealth by generating returns on investments over time. These returns then continue to compound and help grow assets.
                  • Having more flexibility and control over your time is far more valuable than getting another 2% on your returns by working all-nighters or making speculative bets that impact your sleep.
                  • Host rating for 'The Psychology of Money'
                    Nico

                    Rating: 9/10

                    Sam

                    Rating: 9/10

                    Subscribe!

                    If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends!

                    You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

                    44 min
                  • Investing: The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment by Guy Spier
                    The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment

                    By Guy Spier

                    What happens when a young Wall Street investment banker spends a small fortune to have lunch with Warren Buffett? He becomes a real value investor. In this fascinating inside story, Guy Spier details his career from Harvard MBA to hedge fund manager. But the path was not so straightforward. Spier reveals his transformation from a Gordon Gekko wannabe, driven by greed, to a sophisticated investor who enjoys success without selling his soul to the highest bidder. Spier's journey is similar to the thousands that flock to Wall Street every year with their shiny new diplomas, aiming to be King of Wall Street. Yet what Guy realized just in the nick of time was that the King really lived 1,500 miles away in Omaha, Nebraska. Spier determinedly set out to create a new career in his own way. Along the way he learned some powerful lessons which include: why the right mentors and partners are critical to long term success on Wall Street; why a topnotch education can sometimes get in the way of your success; that real learning doesn't begin until you are on your own; and how the best lessons from Warren Buffett have less to do with investing and more to do with being true to yourself. Spier also reveals some of his own winning investment strategies, detailing deals that were winners but also what he learned from deals that went south. Part memoir, part Wall Street advice, and part how-to, Guy Spier takes readers on a ride through Wall Street but more importantly provides those that want to take a different path with the insight, guidance, and inspiration they need to carve out their own definition of success.

                    Takeaways
                    • Patience and continuous learning can make you a successful investor.
                    • You need an efficient working environment in order to become a successful value investor.
                    • The things and people you surround yourself with are going to influence you more.
                    • Adversity is the best teacher of all. Every mistake should be treated as an opportunity to learn and improve. Not just from your own mistakes but learn from the mistakes of others too.
                    • The book is filled with lots of other amazing advice. Go pick up a copy.

                      About the author

                      Guy Spier is a Zurich-based investor. Spier is the manager of the Aquamarine Fund, with $350 million in assets. He is well known for bidding US$650,100 with Mohnish Pabrai for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett in 2008.

                      Host rating for 'The Education of a Value Investor'
                      Nico

                      Rating: 8/10

                      Sam

                      Rating: 8.5/10

                      Subscribe!

                      If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends!

                      You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

                      49 min
                    • Investing: Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 Into $100,000,000 by Jason Calacanis
                      Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 Into $100,000,000

                      By Jason Calacanis

                      One of Silicon Valley’s most successful angel investors shares his rules for investing in startups.

                      There are two ways to make money in startups: create something valuable—or invest in the people that are creating valuable things.

                      Over the past twenty-five years, Jason Calacanis has made a fortune investing in creators, spotting and helping build and fund a number of successful technology startups—investments that have earned him tens of millions of dollars. Now, in this enlightening guide that is sure to become the bible for twenty-first century investors, Calacanis takes potential angels step-by-step through his proven method of creating massive wealth: startups.

                      As Calacanis makes clear, you can get rich—even if you came from humble beginnings (his dad was a bartender, his mom a nurse), didn’t go to the right schools, and weren’t a top student. The trick is learning how angel investors think. Calacanis takes you inside the minds of these successful moneymen, helping you understand how they prioritize and make the decisions that have resulted in phenomenal profits. He guides you step by step through the process, revealing how leading investors evaluate new ventures, calculating the risks and rewards, and explains how the best startups leverage relationships with angel investors for the best results.

                      Whether you’re an aspiring investor or a budding entrepreneur, Angel will inspire and educate you on all the ins of outs. Buckle up for a wild ride into the world of angel investing!

                      Host rating for 'Angel'
                      Nico

                      Rating: 5/10

                      Sam

                      Rating: 7.5/10

                      Subscribe!

                      If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends!

                      You can also listen and join us on ReasonFM or just ask questions.

                      44 min

                    About Wiser Than Yesterday

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                    In-depth breakdowns of some of the worlds most thought-provoking and inspiring books.