12 favorite YouTube talks that will be part of my audio bible

I wrote previously about the concept of having a personal bible, a collection of text that has changed your life and will continue doing so the more you read and review it. A sort of wisdom manual for your life. One that grows and changes as you do.

Maybe there’s a better word than “bible” but I suppose it communicates my point. The idea of a personal bible is like the actual Bible, something you read and re-read and discuss and share with others because its contents are that important, that powerful.

And along with a personal bible of just text, it makes sense to do the same for audio. So I’m starting to collect and save my favorite podcast episodes and TED talks and YouTube speeches. Below are 12 such examples.

Still not sure what the final format will be. Ideally I’d launch a podcast to publish all of them in one place. A podcast is a great format: you can listen at your own pace, access the archives on your own time, and share with others. But publishing rights prevent me from doing so. There isn’t a way to create a curated podcast episodes playlist like you can create a YouTube videos playlist, a user created list of episodes that people can subscribe to and listen to at their pleasure. But maybe someday.

So here are 12 of my favorites for the audio bible collection (please note, this doesn’t include specific podcast episodes, because I’m still collecting them, and will publish a future update):

1. Richard Hamming, You and Your Research

“Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.”

2. George Saunders’ commencement speech at Syracuse University

“they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.”



3. Jeff Bezos on using regret minimization to make decisions

4. David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

5. Robert McKee on writing and writers

“Many years ago the worst thing that could happen was you’d die. So stories were about how to survive. There are far worse things today. People in living hells. People could understand the plague. Who today can understand banking? Parenting?”

6. Jack Ma on startups, technology, and changing the world (wrote about it here)

“I don’t understand technology, I’m afraid of it, as long as it works I’m happy”

7. David Brooks’s commencement speech at Dartmouth College (wrote about it here)

“In the realm of action, they have commitments to projects that can’t be completed in a lifetime.”

8. A discussion between Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Business School (wrote about it here)

“The third thing about juggling, though, is you’ve got to catch the falling ball. The most important ball is the one that’s about to hit the ground.” – Howard Stevenson

9. Glenn Greenwald’s TED talk on privacy

“he who does not move, does not notice his chains” — Rosa Luxemburg

10. Rupert Sheldrake’s banned TED talk on the science delusion

“Terrence McKenna likes to say modern science is based on the principle, give us one free miracle and we’ll explain all the rest”

11. Tim Keller’s sermon on faith and work (wrote about a related sermon here)

12. Jim Carrey’s commencement speech at Maharishi University (wrote about it here)

“So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.”

Jack Ma blasts minds at the Stanford GSB; here are my notes!

This Jack Ma talk at Stanford’s GSB, given in Mandarin (with great English subtitles!), is minute-for-minute the best tech entrepreneurship lecture I’ve heard this year, maybe last year too.

Here were my notes. They are more copious than usual because there’s so much good stuff here: wisdom, humor, anecdotes, rah-rah. Enjoy!

  • in relating a story about how he tried to stop a group of men who were stealing a manhole cover: if you don’t take action, no one will, and if you take action, you may be the beneficiary
  • his whole life, no one told him he was smart, no one believed he would succeed
  • he was first person in China to conduct business on the Internet
  • he thought, Internet will be something, as long as I’m the last person to survive, I will succeed (wow!)
  • Silicon Valley gave him a lot of inspiration
    • when he started working on the Internet in China, everyone thought he was a trickster, but when he went to SV, all the parking lots were full, rush hour traffic, people were working on the weekends
  • believes he and Alibaba succeeded in Chinese internet for 3 reasons:
    1. no money
      • “when you have too much money, that’s when your real problems start”
      • Alibaba has one of China’s largest cash reserves and that’s part of their culture
      • money is like the armed forces, try not to use it, but if you do, you must win
    2. didn’t understand technology
      • still doesn’t understand what coding is all about, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect it!
      • it’s both a tragedy and a fortune that he’s not a CEO who understands internet; he isn’t looking over his engineers’ shoulders, and has great respect for his technical team
      • “I don’t understand technology, I’m afraid of it, as long as it works I’m happy”, in that way he’s similar to 80% of Alibaba’s users
      • was the company’s #1 tester but part of why he’s stepping down as CEO is because he doesn’t even use his company’s products anymore, he’s too old for the internet, young people are even better testers than he is
      • “without belief, technology is a tool”
      • mentions the need for reverence and respect of technology multiple times
    3. never planned
      • wrote one business plan, VC rejected him and gave detailed feedback, never wrote another one
      • it was 96, 97, if you wrote a plan you were either lying to yourself or to other people
      • could get an MBA to write a detailed, beautiful plan, but would it be useful? no
      • “life is a plan that is slowly unfolding…embrace change”
      • “change is the best plan if you don’t want to lose your sense of direction”
      • “I never plan, that doesn’t mean WE never plan”
  • world’s never been in better place, yet never have people had more complaints; “best of times, worst of times”
  • 30 years ago China was not much better than N Korea
  • “change is what will give young people opportunities”
  • it took him 7 years to finish elementary school
  • he took the college admissions exam (the gaokao) 3 times before he passed!
  • attributes it all to hard work, good friends, and a lot of LUCK
    • luck is like seeds to be sown, it won’t come to you on its own
    • when you have a lot of good luck, it won’t continue forever, your job is to sow other peoples’ seeds, spread it around, and it may even extend your own run
  • some of you believe in God, some in Buddha, I’m still shopping around
  • Alibaba is not a business for consumers, it’s for small businesses
    • things change too fast, too hard to understand consumer tastes, not in our DNA, but small businesses know their customers, so we help them
    • if run out of small business customers, we’ll break up the large ones!
  • we’re not competing with eBay, Google, Yahoo…we’re competing with the previous generation, and with the future