29
Co-founded Bracket, a YC company
Composed music, starting with a cappella, then piano, now working on a country album
Play a bunch of instruments but sitar is my favorite
Led around by a dog named Voodoo
Why is it so hard (perhaps impossible) to recreate the ecstatic experience felt by those who practice charismatic religions?
SoulCycle tries but fails.
When was the absolute best time to be a child?
I have a strong hunch it was when I was a kid (early aughts)
It it was the aughts, what would it realistically take to get kids back to that golden age?
What world leaders are motivated mostly by self-interest? National interest? Ideas?
Are there emotions, ideas, abstractions that cannot be captured by words but can be captured by other media?
If so, why? What can't we express with language?
Yet I suspect this is the case.
Will we ever have another decade of musical innovation like the 60s?
What scientific beliefs will our great-great-great-great-grandkids laugh at us for?
What moral beliefs will our great-great-great-great-grandkids laugh at us for?
Is it possible for melting pot cultures to follow a set of high interpersonal standards like that of Japan?
Sci-fi & fantasy
The Three-Body Problem trilogy, Cixin Liu
Solaris, Stanisław Lem
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons
Exhalation, Ted Chiang
Dune, Frank Herbert
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
Spooky\weird fiction
The City and the City, China Miéville
Embassytown, China Miéville
Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman
Classics
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Another Country, James Baldwin
General fiction
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Blindness, Jose Saramago
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Jose Saramago
The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
My Struggle Book I, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, Olivier Guez
Night Boat to Tangier, Kevin Barry
Philosophy
Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl
On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche
The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach
Awareness, Anthony de Mello
History
Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt
Dreaming the Beatles, Rob Sheffield
Zealot, Reza Aslan
Japan and the Shackles of the Past, R. Taggart Murphy
Biography\memoir
In Pharaoh's Army, Tobias Wolff
The River of Doubt, Candace Millard
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
General non-fiction
How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie
Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
Very Important People, Ashley Mears
Range, David Epstein