The clearest case of a book changing a reader’s mind

How to Change Your Mind — book by Michael Pollan. Kevin Ryan says he had never considered or tried psychedelics before reading it and that it “literally did change my mind.” He says the book led him to see potential for these medicines to help with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, pointing to academic results; he had found it on the New York Times’ 2017 best-books list. This is the most compelling recommendation because Ryan describes both his starting point and the shift; the health claims remain his account, not an independent clinical assessment. Tim Ferriss

Other useful reading

• Incorruptible — book; the transcript renders the author’s name as “Eric Reese.” Marty Cagan explicitly encourages readers to read it after describing a corporate-governance problem: product teams can get better at shipping great products yet see their work pulled in another direction by people with different motivations. For product leaders, the recommendation points beyond execution practice to who governs the product. Lenny's Podcast

• Shakespeare’s Professional Career — book by Peter Thomson. Paul Graham, writing about what he is reading, praises its density and says it nearly amounts to a history of the Elizabethan period. The draw is a Shakespeare book that broadens into the surrounding era. @paulg

• An article on what makes art great — Nabil Koreshi. Katie Dill calls it insightful; in her summary, great art combines unexpected details with deeper meaning or recurring themes that hold together as a whole. Dill connects that to AI-era editing: judge details and coherence, not just whether an output looks finished. The passage gives no formal title or URL, so this one is harder to track down. Lenny's Podcast