Samuel Benjamin Harris is an American author, neuroscientist, philosopher and podcast host. His work touches on a wide range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Since September 2013, Harris has hosted the Making Sense podcast (originally titled Waking Up), in which he interviews guests, responds to critics, and discusses his views. In September 2018 Harris released a meditation app, Waking Up with Sam Harris.

Paul Graham is an English-born American computer scientist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author, and essayist. He is best known for his work on Lisp, his former startup Viaweb, co-founding the influential startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, his blog, and Hacker News.

Paul

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Steven

Adam M. Grant is an American psychologist and author who is currently a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology. He received academic tenure aged 28, making him the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School.

Adam

Michael Herschel Greger is an American physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues, best known for his advocacy of a whole-food, plant-based diet, and his opposition to animal-derived food products.

Dr. Michael Greger

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying; The Obstacle Is the Way; Ego Is the Enemy; Conspiracy and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into over 30 languages and has appeared everywhere from the New York Times to Fast Company. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as multiplatinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Ryan

Chris Anderson is a British-American businessman who is the head of TED, a non-profit organization that provides idea-based talks and hosts an annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Chris

Barack Obama is an American attorney and politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president of the United States.

Barack

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. His first five books were on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Malcolm

Susan Cain is an American writer and lecturer. In 2015, Cain co-founded Quiet Revolution, a mission-based company with initiatives in the areas of children (parenting and education), lifestyle, and the workplace.

Susan

Arianna Huffington is a Greek-American author, syndicated columnist, and businesswoman. She is the founder of The Huffington Post, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and the author of fifteen books.

Arianna

Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.Early lifeHoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.Early lifeHoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall.I lost my sight and for a time my memory"). After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easily make good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day.In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels." A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent."LongshoremanHoffer was in San Francisco by 1941. He attempted to enlist in the Armed forces there in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he found ample opportunity as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. It was there he felt at home and finally settled down. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued this work until he retired at age 65.Hoffer considered his best work to be The True Believer, a landmark explanation of fanaticism and mass movements. The Ordeal of Change is also a literary favorite. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.Hoffer was a charismatic individual and persuasive public speaker, but said that he didn’t really care about people. Despite authoring 10 books and a newspaper column, in retirement Hoffer continued his robust life of the mind, thinking and writing alone, in an apartmen

Eric

Dr. David Sinclair, a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, is one of the most well-known researchers in the field of rejuvenation. David is Australian-born and released his bestselling book, 'Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To', in 2019.

David

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality psychology, with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief and the assessment and improve

Jordan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, and former option trader and risk analyst, whose work concerns problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Jocko Willink is an American retired officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Navy SEAL teams. He is also a podcaster and author. His military service saw combat actions in the war in Iraq, where he eventually commanded the SEAL Team 3's Task Unit Bruiser that fought in the bloody battle

Jocko

William

A startling vision of what the cycles of history predict for the future.  —USA WeekendThis astonishing book will change the way you see the world—and your place in it.  With startling originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future.  Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict its future. William Strauss and Neil Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history.  The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four eras—or turnings—that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order.  First comes a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order takes root after the old has been swept away.  Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion against the now-established order.  Then comes an Unraveling, an increasingly troubled era in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions.  Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history.  Together, the four turnings comprise historys seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Strauss and Howe locate 1990s America as midway through an Unraveling, putting us currently in the era of Crisis.  In a brilliant analysis of the post-World War II period, they show how generational dynamics are the key to understanding the cycles of American history.  They draw vivid portraits of all the modern generations: the can-do G. I. s, the mediating Silent, the values-absorbed Boomers, the pragmatic 13ers, and the Millennials.  Placed in the context of historys long rhythms, the persona and role of each generation become clear—as does the inevitability of a Crisis. Whatever your stage of life, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for Americas next rendezvous with destiny. 

Packy runs the Not Boring Club and writes the weekly Not Boring newsletter on business strategy and pop culture. The Not Boring community is more than 100,000 strong. 

Packy

Tony Robbins is an American author, life coach, and philanthropist. Robbins is known for his infomercials, seminars, and self-help books.

Tony

The Fourth Turning

Neil Howe and William Strauss presented a bold new theory in their book Generations.  The theory is that there are four types of generations that repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern.  This pattern follows the history of America, beginning in 1584 to present day, and may be extended into this millenium.  Generations presents a refreshing historical narrative and a thrilling intuitive leap that re-orders not only our history books but also our expectations for the twenty-first century. 

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