My favorite (mostly non-AI) content of the year
Some recommendations for what to read/watch/listen to over the holidays
Tomorrow is the last day before I take a two-week winter break. This is one of my favorite times because I can truly unplug. I get few messages during this period (although always feel free to drop me a note or leave a comment), which means I can avoid checking my email constantly and not feel guilty about it.
Of course, my kids are home from school, so I don’t have a lot of time for consuming content, but if you are expecting a more relaxing winter break, I wanted to give you a few thoughts on stuff I read/watched/heard this year that I found interesting.1
I’m going to stray pretty far from GenAI here, so if you enjoy reading this Substack solely for the GenAI insights, I’ll have plenty of interesting content in January:
January 9th GenAI predictions for 2025
January 16th and maybe January 23rd - new developments in GenAI and implications
January 30th - GenAI and Robotics
I’ve gotten a number of new subscribers in the past week. If you are looking for GenAI content, please check out my thoughts on the most important developments in GenAI this year here and here.
Now, here we go:
Non-fiction
My favorite category of non-fiction are books that if they were fiction would be totally implausible. Books where I’m constantly saying (mostly to myself), “Wait, what?!” as I read them. Here are a few I found this year:
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel – This is the story of a guy and his girlfriend who stole $1B worth of art basically just to look at it. The various creative ways he was able to steal priceless art from local museums and auction houses are memorable.
The Wager by David Grann – This is an exciting story about a shipwreck and how various people did and didn’t survive. Would be completely implausible if it didn’t actually happen. Also, this book will give you a new appreciation for how lucky we are to have regular access to citrus and avoid scurvy.
Maximum City by Suketu Mehta – This is a bit of a cheat since I read this book a long time ago, but it’s so good and so crazy, I figured I’d recommend it. The book is a deep dive into Mumbai where the author interviews people at all walks of life. It starts a little slow, but once you get into it, the characters and situations he describes are mind-boggling. To give an example, there’s a long section in the book where the author spends time with the criminal element of the city. At the end of that section, as a thank you, he is offered one free assassination of the person of his choice. He declines.
If you do want to read about AI, The Singularity Is Nearer by Ray Kurzweil is a great summary of where we are on the journey towards AGI and humans integrating with computers. I referenced the book in a post a few months ago here. It’s not as revolutionary as his classic The Age of Spirtual Machines, but if you’ve never read one of Kurzweil’s books, you should.
Fiction
I read quite a bit of fiction as a I find seeing the world through another perspective can be eye opening. I’m recommending two books that cover the themes of modernity and nature by talking about forests but which approach the topics totally differently:
North Woods by Daniel Mason – This is the story of a single plot of land in New England and what happens to it over hundreds of years. If this sounds boring to you, I don’t blame you. I put off reading this for quite a while. Without spoiling too much, let me just say that a lot of exciting things happen in this tiny patch of forest, with a surprisingly high body count. But, in addition to the plot keeping things moving, it is an interesting reflection on how small decisions can have important cumulative effects over generations.
Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton – This is a modern technothriller that takes place in the woods of New Zealand. It’s a very different but also highly entertaining take on the intersections of modern life, environmentalism, and ruthless capitalism.
If you want to read a fun piece of fiction about AI-adjacent topics, I recommend Fall; or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson. I don’t like all of Stephenson’s books, but this book about a near future where human consciousness can be uploaded to the cloud, hits a lot of intriguing notes. It gets a bit bonkers by the end, but I found it stayed with me for a long time, which is the sign of an interesting book.
TV/Movies
I do watch quite a lot of TV (not a lot of movies), mostly prestige dramas and comedies. But rather than recommending something that you can easily find on an actual critic’s top 10 list, I’m going to pick a bit of a deep cut:
Nathan for You on Paramount+, Hulu, and other services - Most of the readers of this Substack are either investors or consultants and are the sweet spot for this show. This quasi-documentary follows Nathan Fielder as he gives insane advice to various businesses and watches the amusing consequences. For example, he works with a pizza place to create a promotion where if your pizza doesn’t come in 5 minutes, you get a free pizza. But what it doesn’t say in the ad is that the free pizza is only 1 inch. People’s reactions to stunts like this are priceless. Worth a binge if you haven’t seen it
Podcasts
I really like Podcasts as a concept. You can listen to most of them at 1.5x – 2x, which just feels so efficient. It’s like I’m getting the information out of someone twice as productively as I would from an actual conversation!
Here are a couple of non-AI podcast recommendations:
Risky Business October 24th – Risky Business is Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova’s podcast. I wouldn’t recommend the whole show unreservedly since there’s a lot about politics and poker, which you may not find as interesting as I do. But, this episode featured a very insightful conversation with Daryl Morey, GM of the 76ers basketball team. That interview is worth a listen. In particular, I liked how he talked about the objective function you are solving for, meaning if your goal is to win a championship, you make different choices than if your goal is for your team to have the best record possible.
The Puzzler by AJ Jacobs – This is one of my favorite ways to kill 5 minutes (assuming you listen sped up). Each episode, there’s a guest, Jacobs and Greg Pliska come up with a puzzle and then the guest tries to solve it. The puzzles vary in difficulty. It’s a nice way to use your brain a little in a short time
Substacks
As a Substacker myself, I feel obligated to mention a few Substacks that I enjoy (two AI-focused and one non-AI focused):
Understanding AI by Tim Lee - Required reading if you are interested in GenAI. Unlike many Substackers (including myself), Tim Lee does actual on ground reporting to see what’s happening in the world of GenAI.
The Rundown – This is a helpful daily summary of GenAI news. Not sure if many of you want daily updates, but if you do, I find this one does a good job of explaining the implications and not getting too technical
Numlock News by Walter Hickey – A fun rundown of the latest news, including some obscure stories that are easy to miss
I hope you find these recommendations useful. Enjoy the holidays, take some time off, and feel free to drop me a note or leave a comment if you have some content you’ve enjoyed in 2024.
See you in 2025, which I expect will be a very exciting year for GenAI and technology.
This includes things that came out before this year and/or stuff I’ve seen before that I came back to this year