Episode · The Shawn Ryan Show · 2025-09-22
Books mentioned on #238 Sriram Krishnan - Senior White House Policy Advisor for AI
Sriram Krishnan is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and former senior product leader at tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter (now X), and Snap.
Sriram Krishnan recommended Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran, and discussed Zero to One by Peter Thiel and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Private Truths, Public Lies
Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran is a social science book that explores how people conceal their true beliefs due to social pressures, introducing the concepts of preference falsification and preference cascades.
Recommended“there's an amazing book you should read uh from the ' 50s a bit hard to get uh on Amazon it's called uh private truths public lies private truths public lies sounds interesting yes”
Where to get it
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Zero to One
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters is a foundational business and technology book that argues true innovation creates entirely new things rather than merely copying existing models.
Discussed“Peter the talks about this. Pil has his book called 0ero to1 where he basically says that if if you go to Palo Alto right there are in in the Bay Area uh there are probably like 20 Indian restaurants 20 Italian restaurants”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Chip War
“I see you know on your shelf you have chip war by uh uh uh Kelly Chris Kelly out there.”