Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) might have been the original essayist. George Orwell before George Orwell. Montaigne was well-read, smart, critical, and possesed a tendency to write in a personal …
“We don’t see things as they are, but as we are.” — Anaïs Nin *** Matthew Frederick‘s series of 101 things I learned in {Business School, Law School, Architecture School, …
“Even the skeptical historian develops a humble respect for religion, since he sees it functioning, and seemingly indispensable, in every land and age.” *** Will and Ariel Durant have …
The problem with most management, leadership, and business books is that many of them harp on the same self-evident points, overconfident in the usefulness of their prescriptions for would-be …
As the year heads toward an end, what better way to reflect than to look back on the pieces that moved you. Find below the 15 most read and shared articles published on Farnam Street in 2015, spanning …
We’ve been told for decades that dietary fat makes us gain weight, yet research suggests refined carbohydrates are to blame. It’s time to turn the food pyramid upside down. Let’s examine the …
Harvard’s biologist/psychologist Steven Pinker is one of my favorites, even though I’m just starting to get into his work. What makes him great is not just his rational mind, but his …
One of the best parts of Garrett Hardin‘s wonderful Filters Against Folly is when he explores the three filters that help us interpret reality. No matter how much we’d like it to, the …
If you can withhold moral judgment, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero is a great historical account of making decisions in complex situations. Here is one way to describe the career …
Operating a screw is pretty simple as John Maeda points out in The Laws of Simplicity: Just mate the grooves atop the screw’s head to the appropriate tip-slotted or Phillips-of a screwdriver. …
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 …
The best interview question — what important truth do very few people agree with you on?— is tough to answer. Just think about it for a second. In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel argues that it …
Things change as they scale, often drastically. This is true for living creatures and it’s especially true for social systems. Here’s how the dynamics of social groups change as the numbers do and why …
One of my favorite sources of reading material is Tyler Cowen. He’s consistently finding exceptional things that I’ve never heard of. His 2015 non-fiction list is no exception. If he had …
Analogies are a means of drawing a parallel between two different things which we often use to convey complex ideas and to communicate effectively. We often use analogies to aid our reasoning. In this …
In Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future there is a great section on the single best interview question you can ask someone. When Peter Thiel …