159 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American financial trader and author — former market maker — author of The Laws of Trading — who provides the most rigorous conceptual framework for understanding market making and trading.
American cognitive scientist — Barnard College — author of Inside of a Dog and On Looking — who studies canine cognition and sensory perception — the most prominent scientist-writer on dog cognition.
American journalist and author — author of Endurance — who interviewed surviving crew members of the Shackleton expedition to write the definitive survival narrative.
British science journalist and author — former The Economist science editor — author of The Man from the Future (biography of John von Neumann) — the most accessible account of von Neumann's life and ideas.
American technology investor and writer — former hedge fund manager — Wall Street Journal columnist — author of Wall Street Meat, Running Money, and Eat People — who writes about technology and economic disruption for general audiences.
American author and editor — married to Sam Harris — whose Conscious presents the hard problem of consciousness in accessible form, arguing that consciousness may be far more pervasive in nature than conventional scientific assumptions suggest.
British science fiction author — author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, and Rendezvous with Rama — who proposed the geostationary satellite concept — one of the Big Three of science fiction (with Asimov and Heinlein).
American engineer and writer — who writes on energy systems, industrial technology, and engineering economics with unusual depth — a practicing engineer who produces high-quality technical writing for general audiences.
American comedian, actor, and author — co-creator of Master of None (Netflix) — author of Modern Romance — who combines stand-up comedy, television writing, and sociological research.
British military historian and strategist — author of Sherman, Scipio Africanus, and The Strategy of Indirect Approach — who argued for armored warfare and blitzkrieg tactics after WWI and became the most influential 20th century military theorist.
American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States — the first African American president — whose 2008 election was the defining political moment of its decade and whose presidency reshaped American political identity.
American financial journalist — co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room (on Enron) and Shaky Ground (on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) — whose 2001 Fortune article questioning Enron's earnings was the first published questioning of Enron's accounting, triggering the collapse.
Elizabeth Gilbert's 2015 meditation on creative living — arguing that ideas are entities seeking human collaborators, that fear is inevitable in creative work but shouldn't be in the driver's seat, and that creativity should be pursued for its own sake rather than for career or validation.
Bill Finger was an American comic book writer who co-created Batman but received no official credit during his lifetime.
American technology journalist — Bloomberg senior executive editor — author of The Everything Store (on Amazon) and Amazon Unbound — the most thorough journalist chronicler of Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
American screenwriter, director, and showrunner — co-creator of Rounders (1998), Ocean's Thirteen, and Billions (Showtime) — who created a podcast (The Moment) and who represents the creative entrepreneur approach to Hollywood.
American construction engineer and writer — author of Construction Physics newsletter — the most technically rigorous writer on why construction productivity has stagnated for 50 years and what could change it.
American financial writer and analyst — author of The Diff newsletter (one of the highest-quality finance and technology newsletters) — whose writing on financial history, technology companies, and economic dynamics is considered among the most intellectually serious financial commentary available.
American astronomer and science communicator — author of Cosmos (book and TV series) — Pulitzer Prize winner for The Dragons of Eden — co-founder of the Planetary Society — the most effective science communicator in American history.
Singapore-based writer and researcher who writes about expertise development, business, and learning at Commonplace — and who has been a thoughtful voice in the Founders podcast community.
American science journalist and author — author of 1491 (on pre-Columbian Americas), 1493 (on the Columbian Exchange), and The Wizard and the Prophet (on Norman Borlaug and William Vogt) — who writes the best popular science and history for general audiences.
American journalist and author — New York Times — Pulitzer Prize winner — author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators — who writes narrative nonfiction about the science of behavior.
American memoirist and essayist — author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things — who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail alone in grief after her mother's death and wrote the most widely read hiking memoir — also the anonymous author of the Dear Sugar advice column.
Former FBI hostage negotiator — author of Never Split the Difference — founder of The Black Swan Group — who created the most widely read negotiation training based on FBI crisis negotiation techniques.
American satirical novelist — son of William F. Buckley Jr. — author of Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and The Judge Hunter — former chief speechwriter for George H.W. Bush — one of the wittiest writers in American political life.
British economist and financial analyst who wrote The Unaccountability Machine (2024) — applying cybernetics and systems thinking to explain why large institutions consistently fail to be accountable and make the wrong decisions — and Lying for Money (2018) on financial fraud.
American historian of the American West — University of Montana (emeritus) — author of Coyote America and American Serengeti — who writes environmental history of the Great Plains.
American author and co-founder of Thinkwell (educational publisher) who co-wrote Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments with his brother Chip Heath — also wrote Upstream (2020) alone, about solving problems at their source rather than reacting downstream.
American entrepreneur and writer who co-founded Every — a bundle of newsletters about AI and business — and who has written extensively about AI tools, productivity, and the future of knowledge work, becoming one of the most widely read AI thinkers in the startup world.
American psychologist and science journalist — author of Emotional Intelligence (1995) — who created the EQ concept and made it mainstream — co-author of Altered Traits on meditation research.
American psychiatrist and neuroscientist — George Washington University — co-author of The Molecule of More — who explores the neurochemistry of desire, creativity, and addiction.
American-French mathematician and author — Discovery Institute fellow — known for skeptical critiques of Darwinism, atheism, and the cultural pretensions of science — author of The Devil's Delusion and One, Two, Three: Absolutely Elementary Mathematics.
American journalist and social commentator — New York Times Op-Ed columnist — author of Bobos in Paradise, The Social Animal, The Road to Character, and How to Know a Person — who writes at the intersection of social science and moral philosophy.
American computer scientist at Yale — author of Mirror Worlds and The Muse in the Machine — one of the pioneers of parallel computing (Linda language) — who was nearly killed by a Unabomber mail bomb in 1993 — who has written extensively on American culture and the internet.
American playwright and screenwriter — author of Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow — screenwriter for The Verdict, The Untouchables, Wag the Dog — who publicly converted from liberal to conservative and wrote The Secret Knowledge explaining his political evolution.
American technology journalist who was the personal technology columnist for the New York Times (2000–2013) and subsequently Yahoo Tech — known for accessible, consumer-focused technology reviews — author of numerous Missing Manual books on Apple products.
American science journalist and author — Pulitzer Prize winner — author of Sex on the Brain, The Poisoner's Handbook, and Ghost Hunters — who covers biology and psychology for popular audiences.
Dom Joly is a British comedian and writer best known for the hidden-camera show 'Trigger Happy TV', who attended Haileybury College at the same time as Christopher Nolan.
Scottish cognitive-behavioral therapist and author whose How to Think Like a Roman Emperor uses Marcus Aurelius's life as a framework for CBT-adjacent psychological techniques — making Stoicism actionable as a therapeutic practice.
German-Canadian spiritual teacher — author of The Power of Now and A New Earth — who teaches presence and ego dissolution — whose books have sold 10M+ copies and became the most commercially successful spiritual texts since the 1990s.
Uruguayan journalist and writer who wrote Open Veins of Latin America, Memory of Fire, and Soccer in Sun and Shadow — one of the most widely read Latin American leftist writers — who later partly repudiated Open Veins as 'too rigid and too dogmatic.'
American educational coach and author — author of The Art of Coaching and Onward — who works on resilience and coaching in educational settings.
American author and blogger who wrote Barking Up the Wrong Tree — synthesizing social science research on what actually makes people successful, happy, and productive, often finding that conventional wisdom is wrong.
American entrepreneur and product leader who compiled The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — a crowd-sourced synthesis of Naval's tweets, podcasts, and interviews — making Naval's wisdom accessible in book form.
Swiss author — whose Chariots of the Gods (1968) argued that ancient monuments were built with extraterrestrial assistance — the founder of the ancient astronaut genre — who sold 70M books despite universal rejection by archaeologists.
American novelist — author of The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and This Side of Paradise — who captured the Jazz Age and the American Dream's corruption with more stylistic precision than any contemporary — whose career ended in alcoholic decline in Hollywood.
American science fiction author — author of the Dune series — who created the most complex SF world and the most sophisticated SF treatment of ecology, religion, and messianic leadership.
American abolitionist, author, and statesman — who escaped slavery in 1838, taught himself to read and write in defiance of law, became the most famous orator and writer in the abolitionist movement, and served as US Marshal for the District of Columbia — author of three autobiographies.
British writer whose Substack GIRLS focuses on the experiences of young women navigating social media, identity, and mental health — producing some of the most widely shared writing on how digital culture affects female adolescent development.
American editor and author — editor of the Saturday Evening Post for 36 years (1899–1937) — author of Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son — who transformed the Saturday Evening Post into the most widely read American magazine.
British author — whose Fingerprints of the Gods and America Before argue for a lost advanced Ice Age civilization — the most mainstream alternative archaeologist — whose Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse generated an unusual degree of scientific backlash.
Alex Shevchenko's Kyiv-founded, San Francisco-headquartered AI writing assistant — providing grammar checking, style suggestions, and now generative writing assistance — one of the first mass-market AI writing tools.
British author and consultant whose Essentialism and Effortless became widely read self-management texts in the business community — making the 'less but better' philosophy accessible and practical.
American financial journalist — Wall Street Journal reporter and author — who wrote The Man Who Solved the Market (on Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies) — the most credentialed journalist covering quantitative finance.
Anonymous American writer and researcher — gwern.net — who writes long-form research essays on AI, genetics, psychology, and technology with an unusual combination of statistical rigor and breadth — one of the most influential independent researchers in the rationalist and AI communities.
American comedian, actor, and writer — member of Spinal Tap — voice of multiple Simpsons characters (Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Dr. Hibbert) — SNL cast member — creator of Le Show — one of the most influential satirical voices in American entertainment.
American journalist — Washington Post contributor — author of Pound Foolish (a critique of the personal finance industry) and The Index Card — who critiques the personal finance advice industry.
Argentine-American novelist — author of In the Distance (2017 Pulitzer finalist) and Trust (2023 Pulitzer Prize winner) — the most literarily ambitious novelist writing about American capitalism and finance.
American journalist — inventor of Gonzo journalism — author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels — who placed himself at the center of his stories, blurring the line between reporter and participant — whose style influenced every major magazine journalist of the subsequent 30 years.
American naval historian — author of the Pacific War Trilogy (Pacific Crucible, The Conquering Tide, Twilight of the Gods) — widely considered the definitive narrative history of the Pacific War.
American music journalist and author who has written numerous books on hip-hop and rock producers and artists, including Rick Rubin in the Studio.
American author — author of Atomic Habits — whose 3-2-1 newsletter and blog on habits built an audience of millions before the book — whose 2018 book became one of the best-selling self-help books of all time.
American author and journalist — author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art — who synthesized research on breathing mechanics and ancient breathing practices in a book that created a mass interest in nasal breathing and breathwork.
American game designer and professor at Carnegie Mellon — author of The Art of Game Design — who created the 'lenses' framework for game design analysis.
American biographer and journalist — co-author of A Mind at Play (biography of Claude Shannon) and author of The Founders (on PayPal) — who writes intellectual biographies of technology figures.
John Huston was an American filmmaker and actor who directed 'The Maltese Falcon', 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre', 'The African Queen', and 'The Man Who Would Be King', among forty other films.
Canadian author — author of The Tiger, The Golden Spruce, and Fire Weather — who writes narrative nonfiction about humans at the extremes of the natural world — among the most celebrated Canadian nonfiction writers.
Jon Boorstin is an American film producer and author whose book 'The Hollywood Eye' (1990) analyzed the visceral, voyeuristic, and vicarious responses films produce in audiences.
American conservative commentator — former National Review senior editor — co-founder of The Dispatch — author of Liberal Fascism and Suicide of the West — whose Liberal Fascism was the best-selling conservative political book of 2008.
American social psychologist — NYU Stern School of Business — author of The Righteous Mind, The Coddling of the American Mind, and The Anxious Generation — founder of Heterodox Academy — the most publicly prominent moral psychologist.
American historian and former White House speechwriter — author of The Man Who Would Not Be Washington (about Robert E. Lee) — who has written on the Civil War and Confederate history.
American professor of literature and mythologist — author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces — who created the monomyth (Hero's Journey) framework by synthesizing world mythology — whose work was the intellectual foundation for George Lucas's Star Wars.
American essayist — longtime editor of The American Scholar — author of dozens of essay collections — Northwestern University lecturer — the most elegant American essayist of the 20th and 21st centuries in the tradition of Montaigne, Lamb, and Hazlitt.
Roman general, statesman, and dictator — who conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, became dictator of Rome, and was assassinated on the Ides of March 44 BC — whose writings (Gallic Wars, Civil War) are the most important first-person military accounts from antiquity.
American management author and former tech executive — formerly at Google and Apple — author of Radical Candor — who created the most widely used management feedback framework in Silicon Valley.
Canadian game developer and writer — Godot contributor — who wrote the most widely read popular explanation of Georgism (land value taxation) — a game developer turned policy writer through a viral series of essays.
American narrative non-fiction author whose Seabiscuit and Unbroken are two of the most commercially successful works of narrative non-fiction ever published — written while she herself suffers from debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome — making her both a storyteller of extraordinary resilience and a practitioner of it.
South African writer, explorer, and Jungian who wrote about the Kalahari Bushmen and their spiritual world — befriended Jung and served as his representative in the English-speaking world — and was Prince Charles's mentor and godfather to Prince William.
Canadian journalist — New Yorker staff writer — author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and Talking to Strangers — the best-selling popular social science writer — whose books are simultaneously the most praised and most criticized in pop-psychology.
American writer — author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work — who catalogued the daily routines of hundreds of artists, writers, and scientists in a compulsively readable collection.
American stand-up comedian and co-host of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast with Shane Gillis — whose conversational comedy and genuine friendship with Gillis created one of the most organically popular comedy podcasts.
American elementary school teacher, author, and competitive storyteller — 50+ Moth Story Slam winner — author of Storyworthy and multiple novels — who combines competitive storytelling with practical storytelling instruction.
British-American sleep scientist — UC Berkeley professor — author of Why We Sleep — the most prominent public advocate for sleep science — whose book has been criticized for overstating research claims while successfully making sleep a health priority.
British broadcaster, author, and peer — host of In Our Time (BBC Radio 4, 1998–) — South Bank Show host (ITV) — Lord Bragg — who has created the most intellectually serious current affairs and arts programmes in British broadcasting history.
American journalist — former Washington Bureau Chief of TIME — co-author with Nancy Gibbs of The Presidents Club (on the relationships between living former presidents) and The Preacher and the Presidents.
American journalist and professor — author of The Comfort Crisis — who argues that modern comfort-seeking leads to physical and mental health decline, and that intentional exposure to discomfort is essential for wellbeing.
American conservative commentator — Daily Wire host — author of Reasons to Vote for Democrats — a Yale-educated commentator who became a prominent voice in conservative media.
American author — author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and The Undoing Project — the most commercially successful business and finance narrative nonfiction writer of his generation.
American author and political commentator known for anarchist-adjacent views, his biography of Kim Jong-Il, and his presence as the most recognizable face of American anarcho-nihilism in online intellectual culture.
Australian scientist and writer — co-author of Quantum Computation and Quantum Information (the standard textbook) — author of Reinventing Discovery (on open science) and Neural Networks and Deep Learning (free online textbook) — who left academia to write about the future of science.
American editor and author — wife of Norman Podhoretz — who wrote some of the most pointed cultural criticism of 1970s feminism from a conservative perspective — editor at Basic Books and other publishers.
American venture capitalist, VP at Founders Fund, and founder of Pirate Wires — a newsletter covering technology, culture, and politics from a pro-tech, anti-institutional-left perspective.
American writer and researcher — formerly at GitHub — author of Working in Public (on the economics of open source software) — who writes about the political economy of digital public goods.
American journalist — Managing Editor of TIME magazine (2013–2017) — who became the first woman to lead TIME — Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center director — author of The Preacher and the Presidents (on Billy Graham's relationships with all US presidents).
American author — whose Think and Grow Rich (1937) is one of the best-selling self-help books of all time (100M+ copies) — who built his success philosophy on claimed interviews with Andrew Carnegie — despite evidence that many of his claims were fabricated.
American journalist — Rolling Stone contributing editor — author of The Game (on the pickup artist community) and The Truth (on sex addiction and relationships) — who became the most prominent journalist to document and then critique the seduction community.
American editor and intellectual — editor of Commentary magazine (1960–1995) — founding father of neoconservatism — author of Making It (1967) and Breaking Ranks (1979) — who transformed Commentary from a Jewish intellectual journal into the flagship publication of the neoconservative movement.
British journalist — former Guardian columnist — author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — who argues that productivity optimization is a death-anxiety coping mechanism and that accepting finite time is the path to meaningful life.
British-American neurologist who wrote compassionate, literary accounts of neurological cases — making the science of the brain accessible and showing the human richness of apparently bizarre conditions.
Stephen King's 2000 part-memoir, part-writing guide — combining an autobiography of his early life with practical advice on the craft of fiction — the most widely read and recommended book on writing craft.
American software engineer and writer — at Stripe — who writes under the handle 'patio11' on HackerNews and his blog — whose writing on software business, pricing, and Japan is some of the most practically useful in tech.
American conservationist and explorer whose Mother of God documents his years living in the Peruvian Amazon — studying and protecting one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth — and whose Jungle Keeper initiative works to preserve Amazon rainforest.
Brazilian novelist — author of The Alchemist — the best-selling Portuguese-language author in history (150M+ books sold) — who writes spiritual quest narratives with universal appeal.
American science fiction and fantasy novelist whose Red Rising series — set in a caste-divided solar system — became one of the most praised science fiction sagas of the 2010s, combining Roman mythology, political fiction, and epic adventure.
American facilitator and author — author of The Art of Gathering — who trains organizations and individuals to design purposeful gatherings — the most widely read author on the intentional design of meetings and events.
American author and webcomic artist — creator of xkcd (webcomic) — author of What If? — former NASA robotics engineer — who combines scientific rigor with humor in the most popular science webcomic.
American geneticist and blogger — Substack (Unsupervised Learning) and Gene Expression — who writes on population genetics, human prehistory, and the genetics of human variation with unusual depth and accessibility — one of the most widely read independent science writers.
American political scientist — president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) — author of The Origins of Woke — who writes on DEI, foreign policy, and political psychology with a willingness to engage heterodox positions — whose anonymous past writing under a pseudonym expressed views he has since partially distanced himself from.
American author — author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Pulitzer Prize, 1987) — the definitive history of the Manhattan Project — and Dark Sun (on the hydrogen bomb) — the most important science-policy historian in America.
American astrologer and writer who has written the Free Will Astrology column since the 1980s — a widely syndicated horoscope column known for its philosophical depth, literary references, and encouragement of self-determination — rejecting fatalistic astrology in favor of a more empowering, exploratory approach.
American television writer and producer — Cheers writer and showrunner — contributor to National Review — co-founder of Ricochet — who is the most prominent conservative entertainment industry figure to speak openly about Hollywood's political culture.
American journalist and author — author of Boyd and American Patriot — who wrote the definitive biography of John Boyd and John Glenn.
American author — author of The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and Mastery — who synthesizes historical case studies into amoral strategic frameworks — the most widely cited author in hip-hop lyrics and the mentor of Ryan Holiday.
American organizational psychologist — Stanford — co-author of The Friction Project and Scaling Up Excellence — whose The No Asshole Rule became a management bestseller for naming a workplace phenomenon.
American journalist and author — author of Shadow Divers, Crashing Through, and Pirate Hunters — who writes obsessive-quest narrative nonfiction.
American neuroendocrinologist — Stanford (biology and neuroscience) — author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, and Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will — who studies stress hormones in baboons and writes the most accessible synthesis of biology and human behavior.
American author and journalist — author of The Moral Animal (evolutionary psychology), Nonzero (game theory and history), and Why Buddhism Is True — who applies evolutionary biology and game theory to ethics and religion.
American author and diversity trainer — author of White Fragility — who created the 'white fragility' concept and whose work became central to corporate DEI training in the 2020s.
American biographer — author of Titan, Alexander Hamilton, Washington, and Grant — Pulitzer Prize winner (2011 — Washington: A Life) — the most commercially successful serious American biographer.
Ryan Coogler is an American filmmaker known for Fruitvale Station, the Creed series, and Black Panther.
American author — author of The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, and The Daily Stoic — who popularized Stoic philosophy for modern audiences — the most widely read popularizer of Stoicism in contemporary culture.
American journalist and historian — author of Empire of the Summer Moon (on the Comanche and Quanah Parker) and Rebel Yell (on Stonewall Jackson) — Texas Monthly senior editor — the most readable popular historian of the American West and Civil War.
Samin Nosrat's 2017 James Beard Award-winning cooking guide — organized around four fundamental principles (salt, fat, acid, heat) rather than recipes — which teaches the principles underlying all cooking rather than providing step-by-step instructions.
American psychiatrist and blogger — author of Slate Star Codex (2013–2020) and Astral Codex Ten (2021–) — the most influential blogger in the rationalist community — whose writing on medicine, psychology, AI, and epistemology has shaped a generation of tech and AI thinking.
Canadian writer — author of Ultralearning — who completed MIT's entire 4-year computer science curriculum in 12 months without enrolling — who writes on accelerated skill acquisition.
American marketing executive and prolific author who wrote Tribes, Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, The Dip, and Linchpin — and who has published a blog post every day for 20+ years — known for contrarian, aphoristic takes on marketing, leadership, and creativity.
Carlo Rovelli's 2014 essay collection — 7 brief chapters on general relativity, quantum mechanics, the architecture of the cosmos, particles, time, and the nature of the mind — the most widely read popular physics book in Italian history.
American author and Hoover Institution fellow — author of The Content of Our Character (1990 National Book Critics Circle Award), White Guilt, and Shame — the most psychologically sophisticated Black conservative writer on American race relations.
Indian-American oncologist and author who wrote The Emperor of All Maladies (Pulitzer Prize 2011 — a biography of cancer), The Gene, and The Song of the Cell — among the finest medical science writers of his generation.
Spike Lee is an American filmmaker known for Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, and BlacKkKlansman.
American branding and marketing executive — CEO of Co-Communications — author of Brand Up — who trains students and executives in personal branding.
Retired US Army four-star general who commanded Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during the Iraq War and wrote Team of Teams — documenting how he transformed JSOC from a rigid hierarchy into a networked adaptive organization capable of defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
American technologist referenced in discussions of technology and startups on the Dwarkesh Podcast.
American science writer who wrote Where Good Ideas Come From, The Ghost Map, How We Got to Now, and Emergence — examining how innovation, cities, epidemiology, and complex systems work — one of the most popular science writers of the 21st century.
American novelist — the best-selling horror and thriller writer in history — author of Carrie, The Shining, It, The Stand, Misery, and 60+ other novels — whose On Writing is the most widely read craft memoir for fiction writers.
American economist — University of Rochester — author of The Armchair Economist and More Sex Is Safer Sex — who applies economic logic to provocative questions to reveal counterintuitive conclusions.
American author — of The War of Art, Gates of Fire, and Tides of War — who published his first novel at 52 after decades of struggle — whose concept of 'the Resistance' is the most useful single framework for creative procrastination.
26th American President whose Square Deal domestic program, Panama Canal construction, conservation of 230M acres, and antitrust prosecutions (including Standard Oil) made him the defining active-state president of the Progressive Era.
Steven Pressfield's 2002 guide to overcoming creative procrastination — introducing the concept of 'the Resistance' (the internal force that prevents creative work) and 'turning pro' (the commitment to defeating it daily) — the most widely read book on creative discipline.
Annie Dillard's 1989 meditation on the writing process — covering the isolation, difficulty, and strange demands of sustained creative work — written in her characteristically intense, observational prose and containing some of the most quoted passages about creative labor in American literature.
American writer and illustrator whose Wait But Why blog makes complex topics — AI, space exploration, procrastination, relationships, human progress — accessible through long-form illustrated essays that combine intellectual rigor with humor.
American author, podcaster, and investor — author of The 4-Hour Workweek — host of The Tim Ferriss Show — early investor in Uber, Twitter, Facebook, and Shopify — who created the lifestyle design genre and the long-form interview podcast model.
Cheryl Strayed's 2012 collection of her Dear Sugar advice columns — combining personal memoir with frank advice — which became the most emotionally resonant advice anthology in contemporary American literature.
American actor who has won two consecutive Best Actor Oscars (Philadelphia, Forrest Gump) — the only person to do so since Spencer Tracy — and whose career spanning 40+ years represents the most sustained record of critically and commercially acclaimed dramatic performances in Hollywood history.
American conservative writer and speechwriter — former Hoover Institution writer — who has contributed to conservative media and speechwriting.
American economist — George Mason University — co-author of Marginal Revolution (most widely read economics blog) — author of The Great Stagnation, Average Is Over, and Stubborn Attachments — among the most influential public intellectual economists.
American entrepreneur, biotechnology investor, and politician — founder of Roivant Sciences — author of Woke, Inc. and Nation of Victims — 2024 Republican presidential primary candidate — who became the most prominent young voice in anti-woke conservatism.
American comedian and storyteller — Moth Story Slam winner — author — who performs at The Moth and other storytelling venues.
American business author and executive coach — author of Disrupt Yourself — who applies Christensen's disruption theory to personal career development.
Scottish writer and YouTube film critic who operates the Critical Drinker channel — producing film analysis from a culturally traditional perspective — and who has also written fiction.
British journalist and author — author of The Status Game, Selfie, and The Science of Storytelling — who writes accessible pop-psychology on narrative, identity, and social status.
British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940–45, 1951–55) — leading the Allied resistance to Nazi Germany — and who won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1953) for his historical writings; one of the most consequential political figures of the 20th century.
Israeli historian and author — author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century — the best-selling popular historian of the last decade — who synthesizes big history with speculative futurism for global non-academic audiences.
Business author who co-wrote (with Jackie Freiberg) Nuts! — the definitive account of Southwest Airlines and Herb Kelleher's culture-driven management philosophy.
Business author and consultant who co-wrote Nuts! with Kevin Freiberg — the influential account of Southwest Airlines' culture-driven management.
Creator of Farnam Street blog and The Knowledge Project podcast — a media platform dedicated to mental models, decision-making, and learning from exceptional thinkers.
American biographer who wrote acclaimed biographies of George Lucas and Jim Henson — establishing himself as the leading biographer of science fiction and fantasy filmmakers.
American entrepreneur and author of Wanting — the popular application of René Girard's mimetic desire theory to business and personal life.
Damon Young is an American author and cultural commentator, co-founder of Very Smart Brothas (VSB), a widely read blog and publication covering race, culture, and politics with a distinctly Black voice and sharp humor. He later became a writer at The Root and published the essay collection What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker.