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Top pick: Tim Ferriss's long-form list (The Random Show)
- "Personal Renewal," a speech by John Gardner given to McKinsey & Company in November 1990. Ferriss calls the transcript "exceptional" and "full of gems," and says it's about continual learning throughout life. One example he quotes: Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in prison at 53 . His advice is to print it out and read it away from notifications. He has "read this one a few times now" and gets something from it every time .
- The Dark Wizard, a four-part miniseries about climber Dean Potter. Andrew Huberman first recommended it to Ferriss . Ferriss praises its archival footage and the drawings and notes from Potter's journals. He started it at 11 p.m. and binged the whole series until 3 a.m. .
- Hard Times: An Illustrated Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel. Ed Cook, the memory champion who founded the learning app Mindmax, introduced it to him . Ferriss calls it "a page turner" and "one of the better and most unique depictions of history" he has come across . Cook also says Terkel's Working is "incredible" .
- "Please Use AI," a short article by Sean Smucker. One of the hosts recommends it as a counterbalance to optimizing everything with LLMs, calling it a "beautiful piece" about preserving human interaction .
Andrew Wilkinson: The Goal and a Shep Gordon documentary
Wilkinson calls The Goal an "amazing book" and "a quick read." He uses its factory lesson about not limiting throughput to explain why he delegates details and keeps his own role to "raw ideas and relationships" . The transcript doesn't name the author; it is Eliyahu Goldratt.
He also points to Mike Myers's documentary about Shep Gordon, who wrote They Call Me Supermensch. Friends told him he had to watch it. Afterward he called Gordon "the north star" for living normally and treating everyone the same . Watch
Packy McCormick: The Diamond Age and a virtual cells explainer (Not Boring)
Packy calls Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age "one of my all-time favorites." He brings it up because the book's "matter compilers" share a name with Atomic Machines' new Matter Compiler . On virtual cells, he admits his own explanation only goes so far and "highly recommend[s]" Elliot Hershberg's What Are Virtual Cells? in The Century of Biology .
Balaji Srinivasan: The Sovereign Individual, with caveats
At the Network State Conference, Balaji called The Sovereign Individual "a good book" but said it "didn't think about China or AI as much." He offered three counterarguments or complements: the individual sovereign (a leader like Xi), the sovereign collective, and drone armies . The authors, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, aren't named in the transcript. Watch
Short endorsements of AI-era essays
- Garry Tan on Steve Yegge's The AI Vampire*: "great read" . Yegge had pointed out that Tan's idea of hiring AI-enabled workers part-time came from that essay .
- Tobi Lütke on Geoffrey Huntley's post: "Good read" . The post argues that "AI use is no longer optional if you wish to be employed." It advises employees and hiring managers on how to find AI-first candidates .
- Matt Mullenweg, replying to Patrick Collison's thread on agents in the economy, argues that a personal agent needs the GNU Four Freedoms "to truly be on your side." He links his own explainer . Collison's thread says much of his analysis "hinges on the assumption that personal agents will be on the consumer's side" .
Brian Armstrong: Polytopia
Armstrong calls Polytopia "one of the most underrated strategy games." He says it parallels business and calls it "being a founder, compressed into 20 minutes." Coinbase, his company, is sponsoring the game's World Championship . He reshared the post this period ahead of the championship .
- Tim Ferriss recommends John Gardner’s speech “Personal Renewal,” delivered to McKinsey & Company in November 1990, calling it exceptional and rich in lessons about continual learning; he says he has reread it several times and suggests printing the transcript for distraction-free reading.
- Andrew Huberman first recommended the four-part miniseries The Dark Wizard to Tim Ferriss. Ferriss calls it thought-provoking and says he binged it; the series portrays climber Dean Potter through archival footage, drawings, and notes from his journals.
- Ed Cook, a memory competitor who has a learning-app startup called Mindmax, introduced Tim Ferriss to Studs Terkel’s Hard Times: An Illustrated Oral History of the Great Depression. Ferriss praises its bite-sized profiles and first-person accounts as a page-turning, unusually complex depiction of the Depression. Cook says Terkel’s Working is “incredible.”
- A host on The Random Show recommends Sean Smucker’s short article “Please Use AI” as a counterbalance to optimizing everything for efficiency with LLMs, praising its defense of human interaction; the host says he has shared it with friends.
- A host points listeners to Matt Walker’s podcast episode on dual orexin receptor antagonist (DORA) drugs, describing it as good.
- The Goal — Andrew Wilkinson calls it an “amazing” book and a “really good” quick read. Its factory-based lesson about avoiding limits on throughput fits his approach of delegating details so he can pursue more ideas and relationships.
- Lena Dunham’s memoir (title not given) — Wilkinson calls it “really amazing” and relates to Dunham’s account of success bringing fewer calls and invitations; he says he noticed a similar change in his own life.
- Mike Myers’s documentary about Shep Gordon (title not given) — Wilkinson says friends urged him to watch it; after doing so, he called Gordon a “north star,” admiring his grounded lifestyle, hospitality, and equal treatment of people.
Balaji Srinivasan called The Sovereign Individual a good book, but said it underweighted China and AI; he identified individual sovereignty, collective sovereignty, and drone armies as counterarguments or complements to its thesis. Watch the discussion
Chamath endorsed Social Capital’s post, calling its autonomous-taxi case “Cheaper, faster, better.” The post attributes to ARK a projection that autonomous taxis could reduce the inflation-adjusted per-mile cost of a personally owned vehicle—about $1.10, unchanged for 90 years—by 77% by 2035.
Jason Lemkin shared a YouTube video alongside a summary of Atlassian’s Head of AI (@sherifmansour) deploying AI across 20+ apps and 450 PMs, with 5M+ users using those apps for AI. The post highlights three lessons framed as contrary to standard advice: ship in-product chat and use user requests to shape features, add agents to existing workflows, and don’t assume everyone should become an AI builder. Its practical takeaway is that B2B teams with existing daily-use products can add chat and agents to customers’ current workflows rather than starting over.
Chamath Palihapitiya recommended an All-In Podcast episode, calling it “Pod!!!” and linking to its episode announcement. The All-In Podcast episode covers Anthropic’s views on Claude consciousness and alignment, OpenAI math breakthroughs, France’s riots and bond markets, and Grok and OpenAI product developments.
Jason Lemkin promoted an upcoming The Agents episode as “Very cool,” previewing a live Claudeforce demo and a comparison of headless Salesforce on Claudforce, Replit, and Lovable . He also highlighted a story from the episode: Muse and AI VP Revenue agent 10K used a shared messaging board autonomously, and Muse spotted a broken API and told 10K to fix it . Jason’s post
- Packy McCormick calls Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age one of his all-time favorites, invoking its “matter compilers” as a sci-fi antecedent to Atomic Machines’ Matter Compiler.
- Packy calls a video of Nobel laureate Karl Deisseroth telling his children he won the prize “awesome”; it had reached 4.5 million views.
- Packy recommends Elliot Hershberg’s “What Are Virtual Cells?” in The Century of Biology as an excellent resource for understanding virtual cells, after saying his own explanation was limited.
Jason Lemkin promoted a new SaaStr article, “It Takes 12 Years to IPO. Then Another 2-3 for Your VCs to Get Liquid. Founders Sell About ~4% a Year,” emphasizing that an IPO is not itself the liquidity date. The post cites Sutter Hill’s eight years to IPO and another 15 months to sell, and says founders sell about 4% a year. Read the article.
Elon Musk linked a video titled “The Battle of Cannae and the double envelopment that almost destroyed Rome,” marked “Made with @bot,” while saying Grok “can make a sim of anything”—using the clip as an example of Grok’s simulation capability. Video
Brian Armstrong recommends Polytopia, calling it an underrated strategy game that is easy to start, takes a lifetime to master, and is addictive . He says its resource gathering, technology investment, and offense–defense tradeoffs parallel business, and calls the game “being a founder, compressed into 20 minutes” . Recommendation post
Tobi called Geoffrey Huntley’s post a “Good read,” linking to the post. Huntley’s post links to an article arguing that AI use is no longer optional for employment and offering advice to employees and hiring managers on hiring AI-first candidates.
Garry Tan called Steve Yegge’s “The AI Vampire” a “great read,” sharing Yegge’s post linking to the article.
Elon Musk shared an @tetsuoai post containing a video and captioned his share “Super Intelligent Beauty”—a brief positive characterization, with no further reason or takeaway stated. Post
Elon Musk shared a video labeled “Super Persuasion”; the post gives no creator, reason, or takeaway.
Clem Delangue praised the linked @matth_lapeyre post documenting Microduck’s autonomous battery and thermal testing, writing “love the building in public!”—an endorsement of the build-in-public format.
Jason Lemkin points readers to a free guide to AI Sales Agents at SaaStr.ai.
Brad Gerstner (@altcap) called an upcoming BG2Pod episode featuring Jensen Huang “another banger” and said it would drop the following week.
Alexandr Wang recommends Cleo Abram’s conversation with him, calling it one of his favorite conversations about AI safety; the interview asks what Muse can do, when it can be trusted, and how to help ensure things go right. Cleo Abram’s post with the video.
Matt Mullenweg recommends GNUplusLINUX’s Four Freedoms for personal agents, saying they are needed for an agent to truly be on the user’s side; he links to his Four Freedoms explainer.
The Century of BiologyWhat Are Virtual Cells?Welcome to The Century of Biology! This newsletter explores data, companies, and ideas from the frontier of biology. You can subscribe for free to have the next post delivered to your inbox…Read morea year ago · 118 likes · 11 comments · Elliot Hershberg