Episode · People I (Mostly) Admire · 2024-08-24
Books mentioned on Sendhil Mullainathan Thinks Messing Around Is the Best Use of Your Time (Update)
Revisiting Steve’s 2021 conversation with the economist and MacArthur “genius” about how to make memories stickier, why change is undervalued, and how to find something new to say on the subject of scarcity.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Remembrance of Things Past
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust is a monumental multi-volume modernist novel that explores themes of memory, time, and involuntary recollection sparked by sensory experiences like taste and smell.
Discussed“and it reminds me of I'm not going to ask if you read it but have you at least pretended to read Marcel PR remembrance of things past”
Where to get it
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Scarcity
Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir is a behavioral economics book that examines how the psychological experience of having too little of things like money or time consumes mental bandwidth and alters decision-making.
Discussed“you wrote a book and I know must have been almost a decade ago and the book was called scarcity and I love the book I read it in two or three sittings my blurb was on the cover of the book and I raved about it to anyone who would listen”
Where to get it
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Subtract
Subtract by Leidy Klotz is a behavioral science book exploring why people instinctively add rather than remove solutions to problems.
Recommended“there's this great book by Lighty clots it's called subtract it just came out it's awesome, oh yeah I've heard of that I haven't read it it's really nice it's one of the books in our app”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“And it reminds me of—I’m not going to ask if you've read it, but have you at least pretended to read Marcel Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past'?”
“You wrote a book, and I know it must have been almost a decade ago, and the book was called 'Scarcity,' and I loved the book.”