Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
In a letter written in 1784 to his friend Benjamin Vaughan, Ben Franklin has a very interesting cogitation on the aggregate effect of the pursuit of luxuries beyond our needs. Franklin displays a mastery of rational, balanced thought, and a …
Singapore is one of the most remarkable stories in the world. When expelled from Malaysia in 1965, it seemed to have everything going against it: a tiny population, hostile neighbors, a per capita GDP of just $500, and no natural resources …
The fundamental idea behind Farnam Street is to learn to think across disciplines and synthesize, using ideas in combination to solve problems in novel ways. An easy example would be to take a fundamental idea of psychology like the …
Ashlee Vance’s book on Elon Musk is well read for a good reason: It’s a fascinating look at a fascinating person. You can interpret the book however you like. It’s a tale of genius. It’s a tale of someone driven …
To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to commit a form of suicide; in the long run, a more meaningful type of suicide than the …
“When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a …
Many are unaware that the department store J.C. Penney was originally the work of a man named, appropriately, James Cash Penney. Penney was raised in Missouri by a father who doubled as a preacher and a farmer. After a career full of …
Yuval Noah Harari‘s Sapiens is one of those uniquely breathtaking books that comes along very rarely. It’s broad, yet scientific. It’s written for a popular audience but never feels dumbed down. It’s new and fresh …
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track is a wonderful collection of letters written to and from the physicist and professor Richard Feynman—champion of understanding, explainer, an exemplar of curiosity, lover of beauty, …
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood. — Seneca In Pebbles of Perception: How a Few Good Choices make All the Difference, there is an excellent chapter on listening. When it comes …
How is it that some people come back from crushing defeats while others simply give in? Why does adversity make some people and teams stronger and render others ineffective? These are the questions that George Everly Jr., Douglas Strouse, …
In the classic Walden, Henry David Thoreau echoes Warren Buffett on having an inner scorecard and defining your own success: If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to …
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie, author of Americanah, one of The New York Times’s ten best books of the year, tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural …
This interview with Ed Hess is full of amazing insights but I don’t know if you’ll read it because a) it’s long and we live in a world of increasingly short attention spans and b) it’s an actual conversation, the responses can be hard to …
I’ve been slowly working my way through some of Maya Angelou’s material. Notably, Conversations with Maya Angelou, Letters to my Daughter, and What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self. Through that I’ve pulled out these …
Only 200 copies of Henry Miller’s 1972 chapbook, On Turning Eighty, were ever printed; each hand-numbered and signed. How I ended up with copy 48 is a story for another day. The book contains 3 essays, one of which is on aging and …
What makes a genius is a story that never gets told, argues Adam Westbrook, the creative mind behind The Man Who Turned Paper Into Pixels. There is a single thread that connects history’s greatest achievers. “Well,” …
This website is named after a street located in Omaha, Nebraska. An amazing place, Omaha is famous for being the home of Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men. The headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway — and his house — just …
Here are some excerpts from Robert Gates’ Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War that look at some of the decision making aspects under Bush and Obama. Obama was the most deliberative president I worked for. His approach to problem …
Edge.org asked the likes of Christopher Chabris, Nicholas Epley, Jason Zweig, William Poundstone, Cass Sunstein, Phil Rosenzweig, Richard Thaler & Sendhil Mullainathan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Steven Pinker, and Rory Sutherland among …
The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is, you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman No matter what you do for a living, you’re in sales. That’s the …
[quote]”The main problem is that we think we understand the minds of others, and even our own mind, better than we actually do.”[/quote] Despite the fact I do it countless times a day, I’m sometimes terrible at it. Our …
I had an opportunity to ask Robin Dreeke a few questions. Robin is in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and the author of It’s Not All About Me. Robin combines science and …
Richard Feynman has a gift for taking something that seems pretty simple and turning it into something beautifully complex. Watch as he explains how something as simple as rubber bands work.