Here are books, with short summary, as well as podcasts that I found most interesting in 2024. Books are listed in the order  I found insightful and valuable to me. I may not agree with everything they say and try to broaden my horizon by reading/listening to different point of views. Given a topic, you will see a book or podcast from opposing points of view in my list.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin 
This is a book in a quote - so many wonderful quotes. Here are just t three of those: 1) The best work is the work you are excited about.  2) The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.Nature transcends our tendencies to label and classify, to reduce and limit. 3) The natural world is unfathomably more rich, interwoven, and complicated than we are taught, and so much more mysterious and beautiful. Deepening our connection to nature will serve our spirit, and what serves our spirit invariably serves our artistic output. The closer we can get to the natural world, the sooner we start to realize we are not separate. And that when we create, we are not just expressing our unique individuality, but our seamless connection to an infinite oneness.

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter  Attia MD, Bill Gifford
This book's metric based approach  lays out out case for metabolic dysfunction at root of most chronic diseases. Presents a very scientific approach that is not based on one particular diet, drug or nutrition advice . Here is a snippet that will get you pick up the book, and onto an easy read:  Most of the problem is not that we aren’t trying. Modern medicine has thrown an unbelievable amount of effort and resources at each of these diseases. But our progress has been less than stellar, with the possible exception of cardiovascular disease, Death rates from cancer, on the other hand, have hardly budged in the more than fifty years since the War on Cancer was declared, despite hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of public and private spending on research. Type 2 diabetes remains a raging public health crisis, showing no sign of abating, and Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative diseases stalk our growing elderly population, with virtually no effective treatments on the horizon. But in every case, we are intervening at the wrong point in time, well after the disease has taken hold, and often when it’s already too late. We had wasted a lot of time. While the prevalence of each of the Horsemen diseases increases sharply with age, they typically begin much earlier than we recognize, and they generally take a very long time to kill you. The logical conclusion is that we need to step in sooner to try to stop the Horsemen in their tracks—or better yet, prevent them altogether. None of our treatments for late-stage lung cancer has reduced mortality by nearly as much as the worldwide reduction in smoking that has occurred over the last two decades, thanks in part to widespread smoking bans. This simple preventive measure (not smoking) has saved more lives than any late-stage intervention that medicine has devised. Yet mainstream medicine still insists on waiting until the point of diagnosis before we intervene.

Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live by Martha Beck
This is not a recent book of Martha's, I got this one after she came on Huberman podcast. Gist of the book is about relying on your body's feedback as what activities and interests  that you are genuinely into. And visualize wildly impossible goals.  In this book she does not go into visualize your perfect day which she talked about on the podcast.For years I have used perfect day simulation as a north star. Here is an excerpt: You can use your body’s innate properties to play a high-stakes game of Hot and Cold. Your body knows where your North Star is, and it does its best to tell you when you’re getting “cooler” or “warmer.” When you face a proposition that’s wrong for you, your body will try to go into the negative gesture you’ve identified above. When you’re headed down your true path, it will want to celebrate by moving into the positive gesture. 

This is one of my favorite books which I read every year. One of the best analysis on nature of our mind and thought. In this age of GenAI where LLMs are getting better and better, here is an excerpt from 40 years ago: You cannot say there is only thought and there is no thinker. The thoughts do not come from here [pointing to his head], they are coming from outside. The translation of a sensory perception within the framework of your experiencing structure is thought. And you are using those thoughts to achieve a goal. That searching is thinking. But it is a mechanical process. In the word-finder or computer there is no thinker. There is no thinker thinking at all. If there is any information or anything that is referred to, the computer puts it together and throws it out. That is all that is happening. It is a very mechanical thing that is happening. We are not ready to accept that thought is mechanical because that knocks off the whole image that we are not just machines. It is an extraordinary machine. It is not different from the computers that we use. But this [pointing to his body] is something living; it has got a living quality to it. It has vitality. It is not just mechanically repeating; it carries with it the life energy like that current energy.

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping  by Robert M. Sapolsky
Core thesis of the book is the role stress plays in most of the diseases. It  cites of lot of studies to demonstrate that stress can wreak havoc with your metabolism, raise your blood pressure, burst your white blood cells, make you flatulent, ruin your sex life, and if that’s not enough, possibly damage your brain.  And warns against the reductive approach of modern medicine to reduce most diseases solely on germs and bacterias. It offeres common sense approach to reduce impact of stress, with understanding that stress is part of every day life.  Here is an excerpt: Don’t save your stress management for the weekend, or for when you’re on hold on the phone for thirty seconds. Take the time out to do it almost daily. And if you manage that, change has become important enough to you that you’re already a lot of the way there—maybe not really 80 percent, but at least a great start.

I built my first RAILS application more than decade back using the first of edition of this book. With my most recent itch to build an application that addresses a gap that no other apps solved, I turned to recent edition of the same book. Which continues with the same approach using example of building a web store, this time using Rails version 7. Rails team has recently come out with version 8 which is not covered in this book, still this is excellent book which combines practice and theory very well. Rails continues to lead the way with full stack, all batteries included framework, which lets you build the entire application, without having to spend inordinate amount in mundane plumbing.

Even though version 8 of Rails now comes with toolkit(Kamal) for deploying Rails app on containers in production, this book, which is several years old, does an excellent job of getting you started with running Rails app using Docker on your laptop. It saves you from lot of searching on the web to get  your Rails application up and running with Docker, without having to install any dependencies on your laptop. You can run you app using apps server, and a databases as well as side car for utility, all on containers on your laptop, without installing any dependencies on your laptop. And then migrate these to production Kubernetes or ECS environment.

Deep Learning for Coders with fastai and PyTorch: AI Applications Without a PhD by Jeremy Howard, Sylvain Gugger 
This book follows the same approach as the above Rails book but for deep learning. It uses example use case to help you understand core concept behind deep learning. For anyone who does not have background in deep learning this is an excellent book to understand some of the basic concepts using examples. 

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by  Avinash Kaushik 
Primary purpose of buying this books was to understand basic terminologies and metrics used in digital marketing. I walk away with much more than those basics. Excerpt from the book : Million visits to the site. So what? What were the Outcomes for the company? For the marketer?Exit rate and bounce rates are more important than visitor count.  Focusing deeply and specifically on measuring Outcomes means connecting customer behavior to the bottom line of the company. The most impactful thing you will do with web analytics is to tie Outcomes to profits and to the bonuses of your report recipients. A website attempts to deliver just three types of Outcomes:  1) Increase revenue 2) Reduce cost 3) Improve customer satisfaction/loyalty. In the world of Web Analytics 2.0, clicks don’t rule; rather, the combination of the “head and the heart” rules. When you are ruled by the head and the heart, you care equally about what happens on your website as you do about what happens on your competitor’s. 

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by  Robert Lanza, Bob Berman
Of all the theories around existence of universe, this is the one I find most fascinating and most appealing. It posits that consciousness is woven into the very nature of matter.  Excerpt: This approach  protects us from an eternity of individual consciousness while still lifting us out of the meaninglessness of pure biology. Critics say that biocentrism is not a legitimate theory because it can’t be tested, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. If consciousness comprises an essential part of the physical universe, the very idea of testing its existence may be a logical impossibility. I would suggest to start with chapter 16 first to pique your curiosity. Here is an excerpt: Q: What created the Big Bang? A: No “dead” universe ever existed outside of Mind. “Nothingness” is a meaningless concept. Q: Which came first, rocks or life? A: Time is a form of animal-sense perception. Q: What is this universe? A: An active, life-based process. Biocentrism shows that the external world is actually within the mind—not “within” the brain. The brain is an actual physical object that occupies a specific location. It exists as a spatiotemporal construction. Other objects, like tables and chairs, are also constructions and are located outside the brain. However, brains, tables, and chairs alike all exist in the “mind.” The mind is what generates the spatiotemporal construction in the first place. Thus, the mind refers to pre-spatiotemporal, and the brain to post-spatiotemporal. You experience your mind’s image of your body, including your brain, just as you experience trees and galaxies. The mind is everywhere. It is everything you see, hear, and sense. The brain is where the brain is, and the tree is where the tree is. But the mind has no location. It is everywhere you observe, smell, or hear anything.

  

Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain for Life by David Perlmutter 
This books establishes connection between brain and the gut. And emphasis the importance of maintaining healthy gut for not just brain but overall health. Excerpts: You know by now that diets high in sugar and low in fiber fuel unwanted bacteria and increase the chances of intestinal permeability, mitochondrial damage, immune-system compromise, and widespread inflammation that reaches the brain. A central premise in Grain Brain is the fact that fat—not carbohydrate—is the preferred fuel of human metabolism and has been for all of human evolution. In other words, from the perspective of reducing risk for brain disease given the link between overweight/obesity and neurological disorders, the best diet is a low-carb, high-fat one. If you haven’t been able to connect the dots between low-carb, high-fat, high-fiber, and the microbiome, let me spell it out for you. This particular diet supplies the ingredients to nourish not only healthy biology (and thus a healthy microbiome) but also a healthy brain. A diet that keeps blood sugar balanced keeps gut bacteria balanced. A diet high in rich sources of fiber, which you’ll get from whole fruits and vegetables, feeds the good gut bacteria and produces the right balance of those short-chain fatty acids to keep the gut lining in check. A diet devoid of injurious gluten will further tip the scales in favor of healthy gut ecology as well as healthy brain physiology. And a diet that’s intrinsically anti-inflammatory is good for the gut and brain. Note that the Brain Maker diet calls for the main entrée to be mostly fibrous fruits and vegetables that grow above ground, with protein as a side dish.

In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger 
The author tries to answer the existential  question about nature of universe and life based on his near death experience. Excerpt: We’re all on the side of a mountain shocked by how fast it’s gotten dark; the only question is whether we’re with people we love or not. There is no other thing—no belief or religion or faith—there is just that. Just the knowledge that when we finally close our eyes, someone will be there to watch over us as we head out into that great, soaring night.

Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters  by Charan Ranganath Excerpts: Although we tend to believe that we can and should remember anything we want, the reality is we are designed to forget, which is one of the most important lessons to be taken from the science of memory. attention to lock on to something specific. The next time you put down an object you frequently lose track of, such as your keys, take a moment to focus on something that is unique to that specific time and place, such as the color of the countertop, or the stack of unopened mail next to the keys. I have come to believe that forming an episodic memory is a bit like building with LEGOs. You can take apart a LEGO re-creation of a medieval city and sort the bricks and plastic people into different piles. In the same way, the DMN can deconstruct an event, separately processing pieces for who and what was there and pieces for where and how the event unfolded. With LEGOs, you can use an instruction sheet to rebuild that medieval scene or use a different set of instructions that show how the same bricks can be combined to reenact a scene from Star Wars. Likewise, when it comes to memory, the DMN has pieces that can be reused across many different events. The hippocampus seems to have the instructions for how to put these pieces together to remember a particular event, and hippocampal activation spikes as it communicates with the DMN at event boundaries. So just as you can glance at a set of instructions, build a chunk of a LEGO structure, then look back for direction as you move on to the next chunk, the hippocampus may guide the DMN at those key moments, so that it uses the correct pieces to reconstruct the right memory. Our research into the DMN has potential importance for our understanding of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. It’s now clear that amyloid—a protein implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s disease—accumulates in the DMN in about 20 percent of older adults long before any symptoms are apparent. 

I have heard some of these concepts applied at a famous company so when author came on a podcast, wanted to dig a bit more deeper. Core concept of the book is that fixed mindset limits growth.  Whereas growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

I came across the author on a Huberman podcast and got intrigued because he was one of the early ones to warn about the use of sugar by food industry to hack our brains. And stayed consistent on the message. Excerpts: This, my friends, is the explanation for America’s, and the world’s, love affair with processed food. By slowly adding sugar not just to desserts but to diet staples and condiments as well, the food industry has been able to hook us and keep us hooked (see Chapter 14). The fat and the salt, while not addictive themselves, serve to increase the salience of the added sugar (see Chapter 6).33 Then, of course, add the second legal addiction—caffeine—to soft drinks, energy drinks, coffee beverages, and the like to provide the second hook. The bitterness of the caffeine is more than offset by the sugar. Plus caffeine increases the salience, or rewarding properties, of sugar.34 Two addictions—and it’s all completely legal, because both sugar and caffeine are Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA. COOK REAL FOOD FOR YOURSELF, FOR YOUR FRIENDS, AND FOR YOUR FAMILY! It’s connection in that you will be sitting down with people you like (and maybe even love); it’s contribution because you are making something worthwhile; it’s focusing so it’s easier to cope; and, unless you spike it with something, it’s non-addictive.

It has tonnes of metrics  showcasing impact of processed food on metabolism. Key is to focus on gut and liver health. Excerpts: How well your mitochondria perform at baseline and in response to the stress of living and eating. If your mitochondria are fresh, fit, and functional, it doesn’t matter how much you weigh. If your mitochondria are dull, dilapidated, and under duress, it also doesn’t matter how much you weigh. But there’s no simple blood test for mitochondria, which is why doctors don’t know how to assess them. But you will, because now you have all the clues assembled. And then you will know what types of food and food pattern might be best for you. Your waist circumference is a key. If it’s high, expect that there is some metabolic problem, and that you will have to change your diet to improve your insulin resistance. Signs of poor mitochondrial function are high uric acid and high homocysteine. Signs of liver fat are high ALT and high fasting insulin. Signs of poor peripheral clearance of fat are a high triglyceride and a low HDL. This pattern would argue for reducing your refined carbohydrate and sugar consumption. Two simple precepts—protect the liver, feed the gut. Real Food (low-sugar, high-fiber) does both. Processed food (high-sugar, low-fiber) does neither. Processed food is the primary suspect in our current health and healthcare debacle, because it doesn’t improve our eight subcellular pathologies, our three nutrient-sensing enzymes, and our two physiologic precepts.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky 
This is an interesting take on how our environment play a big role in our success or failure.  Excerpts: It’s great if your frontal cortex lets you avoid temptation, allowing you to do the harder, better thing. But it’s usually more effective if doing that better thing has become so automatic that it isn’t hard. And it’s often easiest to avoid temptation with distraction and reappraisal rather than willpower. Genes have different effects in different environments; a hormone can make you nicer or crummier, depending on your values; we haven’t evolved to be “selfish” or “altruistic” or anything else—we’ve evolved to be particular ways in particular settings. Context, context, context. Genes aren’t about inevitabilities; they’re about potentials and vulnerabilities. And they don’t determine anything on their own. Gene/environment interactions are everywhere. Evolution is most consequential when altering regulation of genes, rather than genes themselves.

This is more recent take on how our circumstances shape us. Excerpts:  It is the events of one second before to a million years before that determine whether your life and loves unfold next to bubbling streams or machines choking you with sooty smoke. Whether at graduation ceremonies you wear the cap and gown or bag the garbage. Whether the thing you are viewed as deserving is a long life of fulfillment or a long prison sentence. We know that your life expectancy will vary by thirty years depending on the country you’re born in,[*] twenty years depending on the American family into which you happen to be born; we already know enough. And we already know enough, because we understand that the biology of frontocortical function explains why at life’s junctures, some people consistently make the wrong decision. We already know enough to understand that the endless people whose lives are less fortunate than ours don’t implicitly “deserve” to be invisible. Ninety-nine percent of the time I can’t remotely achieve this mindset, but there is nothing to do but try, because it will be freeing.

This is a short sweet book on how to prioritize life based on what is truly important to you. Well written. Excerpts: The way of the Essentialist isn’t about setting New Year’s resolutions to say “no” more, or about pruning your in-box, or about mastering some new strategy in time management. It is about pausing constantly to ask, “Am I investing in the right activities?” In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” To embrace the essence of Essentialism requires we replace these false assumptions with three core truths: “I choose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.” These simple truths awaken us from our nonessential stupor. They free us to pursue what really matters. They enable us to live at our highest level of contribution.

By the same author, it is on same concept - prioritizing activities that are truly important to you.  Excerpt: It’s the well-known story of a teacher who picks up a large empty jar. She pours in some small pebbles at the bottom. Then she tries to place some larger rocks on top. The problem is that they don’t fit. The teacher then gets a new empty container of the same size. This time she puts the large rocks in first. Then the small pebbles in second. This time they fit. This is, of course, a metaphor. The big rocks represent the most essential responsibilities like health, family, and relationships. The small pebbles are less important things like work and career. The sand are things like social media and doom swiping. The lesson is similar to the one I’d always ascribed to: if you prioritize the most important things first, then there will be room in your life not only for what matters most but also for other things too. But do the reverse, and you’ll get the trivial things done but run out of space for the things that really matter.

In this age, where there is increased awareness, as well diagnosis of ADHD, clinically or self, real or perceived, this book is most well researched literature on the topic. Excerpts: The connectome that lights up when you’re engaged in a task is called the task-positive network, or TPN. Aptly named, the TPN gets you down to work. You’re deliberately doing something and you are intent on it, unaware of much beyond the bounds of what you’re doing. In this state, you don’t consciously know whether you’re happy or not, which is just as good as being happy, if not better, because you’re not wasting any energy in self-assessment. Incidentally, the reason that so many people are starting to look and act distracted, as if they all have ADHD or VAST, is that fewer and fewer people are spending time in the task-positive network. They are not spending enough time focusing on a single task, certainly not long enough to dig a deep enough hole or write an email longer than a sentence or two or do more than look at an egg, let alone fry one. Unfortunately, the TPN is akin to a muscle that atrophies when not used. So as we mentally flit around, the TPN weakens and our attention span shortens. When you allow your mind to wander from a task, or when you finish the task, or if you pause too long in anger or dismay while doing the task, the TPN in your brain defaults to a different connectome. Not surprisingly—given that we default to this state—this other connectome is called the default mode network (DMN). The DMN allows for expansive, imaginative, and creative thinking. The back half of the DMN—called the posterior cingulate—facilitates your autobiographic memory, your personal history. This allows you to think back, draw upon, and pick apart the past. The front part, the medial prefrontal cortex, is the opposite. It enables you to look forward and to think about, imagine, and plan for the future. If there is one takeaway in distilling down the complexity of the DMN and the TPN, it boils down to the fact that the toggle switches between them are off in those with ADHD.” In other words, in most people the DMN does not slip so easily into the TPN; the gears mesh well and are not glitchy. But in people who have ADHD, the gears get stripped, so to speak, and so you’re left with this dangerous/wonderful curse/gift. This is truly a malfunction of the imagination, and it explains the confluence of the creative and depressive we so often see within the same person, even within the same hour.         

The Curious Science of Cravings

Multiplying the Growth Mindset

Sitting with Uncertainty

Seth Godin

Derek Sivers

Is your gut a second brain

Yann Lecun: Open Source of AI AGI & Future of AI

Roman Yampolsky: Dangers of SuperIntelligent AI

Dario Amodi : Anthropic CEO 

Cursor Team

Cenk  Uygur

Donald Hoffman - How Evolution  hid the truth

Arvind Srinivas: Perplexity

Paul Rosolie: Jungle, Apex predators

Bill Ackerman

Sehi Plokhy - History of Ukraine and Russia

Sam Altman

Charan Ranganath: Human Memory, Imagination

Elon Musk

Edward Gibson: Human Language

Bassem Youssef: Israel-Palestine, Gaza

Tulsi Gabbard: War, Politics

Martha Beck

Working Memory

Dr Robert Lustig: How Sugar & Processes Foods impact your health

RIck Rubin: Protocols to Access Creative Energy

Peter Attia - Effects of Light and Dark on Mentak Health    & Treatment of Cancer

Tools to Enhance Working Memory & Attention

Dr Mark D'Eposito - How to Optimize Cognitive Function & Health

Dr Zackery Knight The Science of Hunger 

Dr Jonathan Haidt : How Smartphones & Social Media impact mental health

Dr Gary Steinberg: How to improve Brain Health & Offset Neurodegeneration

Dr James Hollis: How to find your true purpose

Dr EJ Chichiliniskt: How the Brain works

The Reckoning

Nate Silver
Mark Cuban

Yuval Noah Harari

Where are grown ups

Richard Dawkins

Destiny

Amishi Jha

BIll Maher

Robert Sapolsky

Rory Stewart

Peter Zeihan

Coleman Hughes

Peter Theil
Marc Andreessen

Sam Altman

Aza Raskin & Tristan Harris

Sebastian Junger
Marc Andressen
John Fetterman
Dave Smith
Collin Quinn

Few episodes of All In podcast,  Weekly Show podcast with Jon Stewart and Now What podcast with Trevor Noah