7 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
British psychoanalyst and prolific essayist who writes about psychoanalysis, desire, literature, and the good life in a style that blends clinical insight with literary essay — whose books include On Kissing Tickling and Being Bored, Missing Out, and On Balance.
Anglo-Irish satirist who wrote Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal — the greatest satirist in the English language — whose savage irony exposed the stupidity of human pride, political corruption, and the brutal logic of colonialism in Ireland.
Seneca's 124 letters to his friend Lucilius — written in the last years of his life — which are the most literary and humanly warm philosophical texts from antiquity, covering friendship, time, death, travel, crowds, and the good life.
A 2024 systematic survey of prompt engineering techniques — cataloging and evaluating the effectiveness of different prompting methods across AI models.
Stewart Butterfield's 2014 internal memo to the Slack team before launch — arguing that they're not selling software but selling organizational transformation — one of the most widely shared essays in startup culture.
An essay exploring the epistemological problem of validation — who or what validates the sources we use to validate our beliefs — referenced in the Lenny's Podcast context.
American novelist and essayist — author of Housekeeping and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead tetralogy — and one of the most significant religious intellectuals in contemporary American life.