Episodes

In addition to science and philosophy, novels are the third way to observe and understand the world. While science and philosophy are mainly concerned with certainties in our world and aim to solve specific problems, novels explore the uncertainties and aim to raise questions. Every novelist’s work reveals the author's understanding of novels as an art form, and this book explains the view of famous novelist Milan Kundera.

Liar’s Poker is a classic masterpiece describing the business culture of Wall Street in the 1980s. Based on his own personal experience, the author vividly depicts a series of typical scenes in Wall Street financial circles, such as transactions, gambles, wealth, bankruptcies, swearing, and politics. The author uses the game that swept Wall Street at the time, namely “Liar’s Poker,” as a metaphor for the trading games that were turbulent and full of lies.

This book covers all the classical investment practices any stakeholder needs to know. It has been known by many as the “Stock Market Investing Bible” since it was first published in 1949. This book analyzes the difference between “investment” and “speculation,” and discusses how investors respond to market fluctuations. It also introduces the core idea of value investing, “margin of safety,” and what strategies defensive and enterprising investors should use.

Why does no server acknowledge your presence when you walk into an English pub? Why are house numbers in England always hidden out of sight? How come the Englishmen are the courtliest gentlemen in the world and the most notorious football hooligans? What are they revealing to others with all of their peculiar mannerisms? As an entertaining guide to English personalities, Watching the English will introduce you to the most authentic English people.

“Listen to your heart and start writing.” This was the advice that Anne Lamott told her students on the first day of a writing workshop. Drawing on her own writing experiences, Lamott aptly demonstrates her methods for writing. She also provides step-by-step guidance on how to tackle various situations in the writing process from her book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

This book systematically discusses the theory of cultural neurosis and strongly refutes Freud's biological determinism. It is a thorough critique and revision of traditional psychoanalysis as well as one of Horney's most representative works. It marks the beginning of the social-cultural school of thought in the field of psychoanalytic study. Upon its release, it elicited a dramatic response from readers and has been reprinted several times.

This book mainly tells the story of how several ordinary Wall Street workers found out the secret of the bond market, realized the crisis hidden under the "subprime" bubble, and got rich by shorting the market. The book also reveals the dark side of American financial institutions and financial rating agencies. It analyzes the various causes of the financial crisis.

Critics, investors, and senior managers need to make predictions about the future of their industry. The key to forecasting is to identify the signals of change, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, and assess their strategic decisions. Seeing What’s Next is based on the innovation theories from The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution. It can help us to predict the future of industries and make informed decisions.

You probably are familiar with company performance. But what affects performance? Is it the corporate culture, customers, values, or managers? If what affects performance is a factor that is known for certain, then why is our company performance not improved after implementing the same strategies that top companies such as Toyota and Starbucks use as revealed in various management books? In fact, factors that affect performance are uncertain. We are often misguided by business delusions, thinkin...

Why can’t the poor escape poverty? Esther Duflo and Abhijit V. Banerjee went deep into 18 impoverished countries and regions on five continents to explore the causes of poverty and possible solutions. They examined the daily life, education, health, economic situation of the poor, and government policies and assistance from non-governmental organizations. Based on the results of randomized controlled trials, Duflo and Banerjee put forward many practical suggestions that guide policymakers, phila...

Albert Einstein once said, “Interest is the best teacher.” However, it has become increasingly common for us to see children who are not interested in school or even hate school. This is a a source of frustration for teachers and parents. Why don’t students like school? How do you get students to enjoy school? This book will give you a thorough explanation of the real reasons why students don’t like school from the perspective of cognitive psychology, and lead you to the golden key that unlocks ...

Deliberately or not, people tend to undervalue the role of playwrights compared to directors, actors, and actresses. We all know that a playwright writes plays, but few have explored the core competencies of playwrights. According to Lajos Egri, the author of this book, playwriting is all about building character-driven conflicts with a premise. After learning his approaches, you can become a great storyteller and sophisticated viewer who can interpret any play. Since its publication in 1946, Th...

How to achieve an investment performance that is better than the market average? It requires different ways of thinking. In his investment memos written over the years, Howard Marks proposed "second-level thinking ". You must deviate from the norm. If you want to beat the market, you must think of something others haven’t thought of, see things they miss and bring insight they don’t possess. Therefore, you need to pay attention to the most important things in your investment: value, long-term sh...

Babylon, one of the four ancient civilizations, was a wealthy nation with countless gold and jewels but with limited natural resources. Its brilliance was entirely the result of human wisdom. The Richest Man in Babylon introduces ancient wisdom from 5,000 years ago and reveals how Babylon got rich. You will become enlightened about wealth and understand its most fundamental laws. These oldest and most effective laws of wealth can guide you from being penniless to success and happiness.

Google’s success relies on excellent talent and teams. So how does Google get the most outstanding talent in the world to work for it? And how does it train and keep talent and explore human creativity to the maximum? This book reveals the team management and pursuing talent methods of Google that subverted traditional perceptions for the first time. It was ranked first in the bestseller list of The New York Times and has been recommended by many famous media outlets in the United States.

Who makes money better than anyone else in the world? Many people would say it’s Warren Edward Buffet. Investors around the world are dying to know the secret of Buffett’s success. What made him so wealthy? What does his experience look like? This book records Buffett’s legendary life, from his childhood to his rise as one of the wealthiest men of his generation, and discusses his investment philosophy and life wisdom.

Every entrepreneur is eager to know what kind of startup can gain a foothold in the business world, and understand how to make innovative products, face competition, assemble teams, sell products and services, and ensure a company's sustainable development. In this book, Peter Thiel, known as the "Silicon Valley venture capital godfather," gives the right answers based on his entrepreneurial history and experience. In his opinion, startups must find unique ways to innovate if they want to succee...

Do you run every day? Do you feel pain when you run? In fact, humans are born to run with extremely springy legs and dense sweat glands, which allow us to run and cool off simultaneously. The greatest distance runners on earth are the reclusive Tarahumara, who live in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. They chase prey in the mountain and can run for dozens of hours without getting injured. This book unveils the mysteries of the Tarahumara and their secrets about running.

Do schoolteachers cheat to meet high-stakes testing standards? Is sumo wrestling a corrupt sport? What caused crime rates in the United States to plunge in the 1990s? When you encounter these "strange" questions in this book, you’ll be surprised to learn it was written by an economist. With the help of data in the form of schoolchildren’s test scores, sumo match records, abortion history, or crime rates, the author has come to various shocking conclusions and unmasked the real world behind the v...

When it comes to being influential, the first thing that comes to mind is altering the attitudes and decisions of our audience through some sort of effort or skillful communication and negotiation. However, this book, “Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade”, tells us the different methods that top persuaders use to prepare so that their audience is receptive when receiving new information. It introduces some new approaches which can be used to enhance the possibility of agre...

Modern marketing is essentially a war. In this war, the enemy is the competitor, and the customer is the target. If you want to defeat your competitors and occupy your targets, serving customers is just not enough. You must also learn how to defend yourself, attack your competitor, and utilize guerrilla or flanking warfare against the competition. By examining different forms of corporate positioning, the book Marketing Warfare discusses four military strategies often used in war to help compani...

As one of the classic works of contemporary linguistics, this book marks the beginning of the study on cognitive linguistic metaphor systems. The book is both academic and popular. It shows that metaphor is both a vocabulary problem in language and an essential method of human thought processing that participates in not only human cognitive processes but also, more importantly, is the primary method of human living. Metaphor is based on our daily life experience. If we use metaphor effectively, ...

Homo sapiens were once an inconspicuous group in the corner of Africa. How did they eventually make it to the top of the biological chain and take over the planet? Where did money and religions originate from? Why did the empires created by humankind rise and fall one after another? How did science and capitalism become the most crucial tenets of modern society? This book will help you sort out the journey of humankind from ancient times. By uncovering the origins of cultures, religions, laws, n...

A young hedge fund manager won the auction for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, with a bid of $650,100. The meal with Buffett turned out to be the most valuable lesson in his life. Through constant reflection, he got rid of his ignorance and arrogance and finally became a successful value investor. What exactly happened during this lunch? What kind of wisdom did he gain from the master investor? This book will give you answers and take you into this Nirvana journey of expl...