NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" ( Los Angeles Times ). “Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” — The New York Times Book Review For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Recommended on 2 episodes:

Why Are Palantir and OpenAI Scared of Alex Bores?

Leading the Future, a super PAC whose funders include the founders of companies like Palantir and OpenAI, is spending millions of dollars this election cycle, and a considerable amount of that money is going toward attack ads against Alex Bores – even though Bores himself used to work for Palantir. Bores is a New York state assemblyman who is running for Congress to represent New York’s 12th District. His campaign includes an extensive A.I. policy platform, including demands for A.I. companies to be more transparent about safety, and an idea for an “A.I. dividend” that would redistribute some of the profits of A.I. companies to the public. So his race has turned into a central battleground over the future of the A.I. industry and who has the power to shape it. In this conversation, we discuss how Bores went from working for Palantir to running a campaign that would regulate the A.I. industry, the major issues he thinks A.I. policy needs to address, and his response to the attacks against him.

Books recommended:

• 📕  Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• 📘  A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
• 📗  World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy by Catherine Bracy

Alex Bores April 21, 2026 3 books recommended

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Tim Ferriss on suffering, psychedelics, and spirituality

Books recommended:

• 📙  Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• 📕  The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire (20th Anniversary Edition) by David Deida
• 📘  Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear by Dr. Frank Luntz
• 📗  The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials) by Peter F. Drucker
• 📙  Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
• 📕  Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
• 📘  When Less Becomes More: Making Space for Slow, Simple, and Good by Emily Ley
• 📗  Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• 📙  Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) by Frank Herbert
• 📕  The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
• 📘  Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien
• 📗  The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin

March 2, 2017 12 books recommended

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