The Best of 2023: Neil Pasricha rewinds and reflects on the richness of reading
Release Date: 12/22/2023
Chapter 25: James Frey on drunk, defiant differentiation
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
What do you know about James Frey? Or what do you think you know about James Frey? I’m guessing it’s not nothing. Everyone has an opinion! When I first spotted '' on my wife’s bookshelf when we were moving in together I was like “Oh? Really? That book? The Oprah guy?” And she was like “Have you read it?” And I was like “No, no idea what it’s even about. Just that it’s not real or whatever.” She looked at me with disappointed eyes. Understandably so! I hadn’t bothered to go below the surface. To read about it on my own. I had just soaked in some distant fumes off...
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Chapter 145: Lindyman leverages long-lasting lessons on living a limitless life
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Don't use mouthwash. Why? It's not Lindy. At least that's what Paul Skallas, a Chicago-born technology lawyer who goes by Lindyman online, says. I was fascinated to read a New York Times profile of him titled "The Lindy Way of Living," and knew I wanted to have him on 3 Books. In the 2012 book 'Antifragile,' the statistician and scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined "the Lindy Effect." He wrote, "For the perishable, every additional day in life translates to a shorter additional life expectancy, kind of like me and you and the cheese and our fridge, or the milk and...
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Chapter 22: Tim Urban on shivering in shorts and shifting from sheep to chef
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
We live in interesting times. And they're getting interestinger! I keep my eyes open for big thinkers to help guide and inform me as I keep trying to make sense of the world. My friend Tim Urban is one of those people: Tim has a giant mind willing to engage with our fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. The big questions! Tim's blog still scores millions of readers per month with big-name fans like , Bari Weiss, Sam Harris, Bryan Johnson, and (yes) Elon Musk. Why? Because Tim has an incredible way of smallifying...
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Chapter 144: Nick Sweetman on breaking boundaries with brilliant birds
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
is one of Toronto's most prominent graffiti artists. Last February I was walking down Lansdowne Avenue in Toronto with my friend , who was our guest back in , and as we strolled under a giant bridge I saw a giant ... well, it looked like a photo! But it wasn't a photo. It was a massive spray-painted image of a , and at the very bottom corner was a signature that said "Nick Sweetman." Looks like a photo, right? Look at that eye! That bill! But I discovered there's this Toronto mural artist named Nick Sweetman and turns out I've seen the guy's stuff all over the place. He paints , , , and ...
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Chapter 18: David Sedaris on holding happiness hostage and healing holes in our hearts
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Who else loves David Sedaris? I discovered him in 1997 when an old mentor/editor at Golden Words, my college humor papers, suggested I pick up his book 'Naked' to become a better writer myself. I found the essays sardonic, witty, uncannily observational, and laugh-out-loud funny. I couldn't believe how gently and elegantly he wrote about topics ranging from his obsessive compulsive tics to dropping out of school to (in the namesake essay) visiting a nudist colony. Like millions of people around the world I became obsessed with David Sedaris. I’ve read all of his books—'Me Talk Pretty One...
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Best Of 2024: Neil Pasricha plucks pithy pointers to prime ponderings
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Happy Solstice! As we do every December solstice it's time for our 7th Annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books. 3 Books is our 22-year-long conversation to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world. This year we sat with to , with in Santa Cruz to in the North York Moors, with the and , with to a . This year I've changed tack and made the "Best Of" highly concentrated—under 50 minutes long!—with little snippets from our diverse guests to provide reflection, provoke your thinking, and help to set intentions for 2025 and beyond. Thank...
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Chapter 143: Chris Smalls on anti-Amazon activism and abolishing aristocracy
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world with over a million employees in the U.S. alone. A monolith responsible for trillions of dollars of revenue through retail, entertainment, and infrastructure. But Chris Smalls took it on anyway. Chris had worked at Amazon for 5 years before he was fired in March 2020 after leading a walkout at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse to protest pandemic working conditions. "We all got radicalized at some point in our lives," he told me. "My life changed forever when I got fired from Amazon." Chris used that motivation to...
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Chapter 15: Mitch Albom on making music, managing mojo, and memorializing Morrie
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Once you find purpose, and once you find style… what’s left? Beauty. What’s left is finding and putting out beauty into the world. There are not many writers who have genuinely figured this out … but one of them is Mitch Albom. Mitch is the author of ',' the bestselling memoir of all time, as well as '' and his latest bestseller '' which came out in 2023 and debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. His books have sold over 40 million copies. Mitch just doesn’t turn off. He’s like a Tasmanian Devil. He’s hosting a , he’s on TV, he’s writing columns in...
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Chapter 142: Oliver Burkeman relishes reflection and reveals writing rituals
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Are you ready for a writing masterclass from one of the best self-help writers in the world? After graduating from Cambridge, Oliver Burkeman wrote the popular column “” in ‘The Guardian’ for over 15 years sharing his real-world, real-time poetic exploration of the self-help universe. In 2021 he published ',' a literary examination of how we live today. Mark Manson (our guest in ) called it “a reality check on our culture’s crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life” and Adam Grant (our guest in ) called it “the most...
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Chapter 7: Vishwas the Uber driver on setting standards and secrets of stellar service
3 Books With Neil Pasricha
Let's jump into the backseat of Vishwas Aggrawal's Uber and take a trip you won't forget. This is a story about setting your own standards in a world constantly hammering us into "human resources." This is a story about setting your own winning lines in a world that wants us to be widgets. This is a story about raising the bar for yourself and deeply valuing the human connection and love that has the potential to exist between every single one of us. Uber has no formal leaderboard, reward mechanism, or pay-for-performance tied to driver rating. So why would Vish care? Why would he...
info_outlineAnother year around the sun!
It is the Winter Solstice which means it is time for our sixth annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books. 3 Books began back in 2018 with a simple goal of counting down the 1000 most formative books in the world ... 3 books at a time. We wanted this show to help all of us read more and read better and we wanted to do that by being different -- with a lunar-based schedule and a deep intention of being an ‘intrinsically-motivated journey’ with no ads, sponsors, commercials, or interruptions.
We started collecting values like: "No book shame, no book guilt", "Humans are the best algorithm", and "You are what you eat and you are what you read."
Over the years this journey has been a warm ray of sun in my life. I hope it’s felt the same for you.
My goal with the “Best Of” is to reflect on the year by picking a snippet from every Chapter and Bookmark that helps us pause and ponder.
You'll hear (or re-hear) wisdom from our chats with Steve Toltz, Timothy Goodman, Johann Hari, Tank Sinatra, Suzy Batiz, Martellus Bennett, Chefs Osama and Houssam, Jully Black, Lenore Skenazy, Heather McGowan, Sahil Bloom, Ralph Nader, and J. Drew Lanham (his interview is coming out on December 26th!!)
Thank you for sharing time with me and our incredible warm-hearted community of 3 Bookers around the world. I hope this (lengthy!) Best Of can keep you company on a long drive, late-night walk, or over some quiet moments through the holidays.
Let’s stop and reflect and then keep enjoying the ride.
Listen now at 3books.co/chapters/best-of-
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3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 22-year-long quest to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter discusses the 3 most formative books of an inspiring person. Sample guests include: Brené Brown, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, Angie Thomas, Daniels, Cheryl Strayed, Rich Roll, Soyoung the Variety Store Owner, Derek the Hype Man, Kevin the Bookseller, Vishwas the Uber Driver, Roxane Gay, David Mitchell, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Mark Manson, Seth Godin, Judy Blume, and Quentin Tarantino. 3 Books is published on the lunar calendar with each of the 333 chapters dropped on the exact minute of every single full moon all the way up to April 26, 2040. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and is 100% non-profit with no ads, no sponsors, no commercials, and no interruptions. 3 Books has 3 clubs including the End of the Podcast Club, the Cover to Cover Club, and the Secret Club, which operates entirely through the mail and is only accessible by calling 1-833-READ-A-LOT. Each chapter is hosted by Neil Pasricha, New York Times bestselling author of 'The Happiness Equation', 'Two-Minute Mornings', and 'The Book of Awesome.' For more info check out: https://www.3books.co