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Chapter 145: Lindyman leverages long-lasting lessons on living a limitless life

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Release Date: 02/12/2025

Chapter 42: Molly Bloom on poker princess privileges and pushing past pomposity show art Chapter 42: Molly Bloom on poker princess privileges and pushing past pomposity

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Join me on the couch in Molly Bloom's hotel room at the Four Seasons in downtown Toronto.  Molly began her career as a world-class skier, but while training as a pre-teen was diagnosed with severe scoliosis. Her doctor told her she could never ski again, but even as a pre-teen Molly had incredible strength of mind and she ended up back on the slopes only a year after her surgery.    By age 21, she was ranked #3 in North America. She then took off to LA and began running one of the most exclusive, high-stakes, underground poker games in the world, featuring players like Alex...

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Chapter 158: Sonja Lyubomirsky helps harness happiness by honing hearty habits show art Chapter 158: Sonja Lyubomirsky helps harness happiness by honing hearty habits

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

is one of the most influential happiness researchers of our time. Sonja moved to the United States from Moscow at age 9 in the 70s. She went to Harvard and Stanford in the 80s and began studying happiness in 1989 ... longer than almost anyone else alive! Positive psychology wasn't "founded" by and for another decade. Sonja has published hundreds of papers including her  which defined the field by flipping a long-held assumption on its head: That happiness doesn’t follow success but causes it. Sonja is now following up her bestsellers '' and '' with a new book called '', a joint...

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Chapter 40: Comedian Pete Holmes on infinite infinities and the insanity of is-ness show art Chapter 40: Comedian Pete Holmes on infinite infinities and the insanity of is-ness

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

A few years ago I was in LA and I went with my friend Chad to a "Judd Apatow and friends" comedy show where I was blown away by the lineup he brought out. Ray Romano! Zach Galifianakis! And, of course, the incredible Pete Holmes. Pete was my favorite comic that night. I have loved his comedy for years! And his book '' was a wonderful read. My parents are Hindu but I grew up in the secular suburbs of Toronto being exposed to many different religions. Pete was very religious, and then wasn’t, and now is again ... in this thoughtful, examining, spiritual way. His book, which is essentially...

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Chapter 157: Paul Hawken junks jargon to jolt generations show art Chapter 157: Paul Hawken junks jargon to jolt generations

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Paul Hawken is a brilliant thinker, author, activist, and elder who masterfully distills wisdom about our planetary home. I remember hearing Paul's 2009 commencement speech called "" where he said "You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living system is declining and the rate of decline is accelerating."  Paul is the author of nine bestselling books including '', '', and his latest book ''—an incredible book that came out in 2025 and masterfully distills endless planetary wisdom into simple truths we all need to hear. (I...

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Chapter 38: Ryan Holiday bashes beachy books and builds a balanced base show art Chapter 38: Ryan Holiday bashes beachy books and builds a balanced base

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Thirteen years ago I was surfing online when I stumbled on a blog post called “” by someone I'd never heard of named Ryan Holiday. I started reading the post and got sucked in. He had a point! Many great points, actually. And he was young. 26 years old! A 26-year-old young man telling the world to read more books? In an era where most twenty-something men read, uh, none? I found Ryan to be a breath of fresh air. I immediately began to copy everything he did! He launched a . I launched a ! (With his blessing, of course.) He was talking about reading fifty then a hundred and then...

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Chapter 156: Salim Amin chronicles courage and compassion in crisis and conflict show art Chapter 156: Salim Amin chronicles courage and compassion in crisis and conflict

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Africa is the world's second largest continent—by land and population!   One and a half billion people spread across fifty-five countries. It's huge! Even a trip there, even many trips there, can only scratch the surface. But we're trying! My mum was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1950, and I recently returned from my first journey to Africa where I met incredible people and heard remarkable stories.   In this third African chapter of 3 Books I sat down with Salim Amin where we discuss what it means to be a great citizen in the world today and how leading with compassion and curiosity...

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The Best Of 2025: Neil Pasricha mines memorable, mind-shifting moments and messages show art The Best Of 2025: Neil Pasricha mines memorable, mind-shifting moments and messages

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Happy Solstice, everyone! In the northern hemisphere today we have the least amount of daylight of any day of the year. Below the equator it has the most! And as we do every December solstice it's time for our annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books. 3 Books is our award-winning 22-year-long conversation to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world ... 3 books at a time. This year we recorded shows in Nairobi, Ottawa, Del Mar, and even a few on the street ... journeying to collect stories and lessons that can help us all live richer lives of meaning and intention. ...

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Chapter 37: Malcolm Gladwell on strangers, spies, and silencing the system show art Chapter 37: Malcolm Gladwell on strangers, spies, and silencing the system

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Who we are is a function of where we are. Do you agree with that? Who you are depends on where you are. We’re different people in different places, right? You’re different in the board room than you are on vacation. You’re different with your parents than you are with your kids. I’m different hanging out with Malcolm Gladwell in his West Village apartment than I am sitting in my basement as I type up a little note about it. That theme is one that we get to open up in this chapter of 3 Books with the one and only . I flew down to New York and joined Malcolm at his place where we...

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My Book 'Canada is Awesome' | Full Audiobook show art My Book 'Canada is Awesome' | Full Audiobook

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

This podcast is me reading a little book I put out earlier this year: CANADA IS AWESOME It's an audio book about all the weird, wonderful, beautiful things that make Canada ... Canada. Did you ever notice Canadians speak in the collective? “What do you think of the weather we’re having?” “Shall we grab a Timmy's before the meeting?” “Think we have a shot at the playoffs?” We, we, we. We use the word we so much. Why do we feel like such a collective? I don’t think it’s complicated. I think it’s because we are one. We all toss around half of everything we make into a big...

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Chapter 155: Bulle the Bookseller broadens borders and births bibliophiles show art Chapter 155: Bulle the Bookseller broadens borders and births bibliophiles

3 Books With Neil Pasricha

We're back to Africa! Last month we kicked off a little Kenyan series on and today I’m thrilled to share another chapter recorded in the heart of pulsing downtown Nairobi in the country's top bookstore. I landed after an overnight flight and immediately filled my belly with fresh samosas, pakoras, curried goat tripe, and fresh tamarind juice ... for breakfast! ... and then, after seeing the city I hopped into a car with Perlexy, who works with our guest in Chapter 104 and current Kenyan Presidential nominee , and drove downtown... We parked the car and met up with Boniface and his son...

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More Episodes
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 our fridge. But for the non-perishable, every additional day may imply a longer life expectancy." The Lindy Effect says that the longer something has been around, the longer it will stay around.
 
Paul took this heuristic and with his unique and perceptive insights along with his deep reading of ancient history came to apply it to a broad range of things, including health. He doesn't use mouthwash, a relatively new invention that kills good *and* bad bacteria. But floss—poking stuff out of your teeth—has been around for thousands of years, so that can stay.
 
This Lindy heuristic is a useful way to navigate our noisy modern world. As reality destabilizes with spiking AI and a fracturing media landscape we can learn and apply long-range lessons from the past to help us today. I love the unique, provocative, and often challenging 'The Lindy Newsletter,' which Lindyman publishes 2-3x weekly, to help us apply the framework to topics as diverse as urban planning, dating, medical trends, drinking trends, and even whether we should listen to health influencers.
 
Lindyman gave me 3 very interesting and formative books. We talk about them along with the unintended consequences of the woke movement, why you should eat vegan once a week, how modern employment is destroying families, and much more. If you like to have your brain stretched like taffy and provoked by unusual thoughts this is the chapter for you.
 
Let's flip the page to chapter 145 now.