Oxide and Friends

It's the annual Oxide and Friends tradition: Books in the Box! What books have the Oxide friends enjoyed? Didn't catch the show live, feel free to add your book recommendation as a PR in the show notes.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Tom Lyon, and Ian Grunert.

Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
Recommendations from Bryan and Adam:
Books in the Bonfire:
Recommendations from Tom Lyon:
Recommendations from Ian Grunert:
Also mentioned (but not necessarily recommended):
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Creators and Guests

Host
Adam Leventhal
Host
Bryan Cantrill

What is Oxide and Friends?

Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form.
Join us live (usually Mondays at 5pm PT) https://discord.gg/gcQxNHAKCB
Subscribe to our calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f4185aa71c4524d0d6127f31058c9e21f29f017d48a0fca6f564969cd0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Bryan Cantrill:

How are you? I... Books in the Box. We're, I'm I'm excited.

Adam Leventhal:

Back in

Bryan Cantrill:

the Did you happen to listen to last year's Books in Box? Not that you No.

Adam Leventhal:

You always ask me that. And then

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm I always ask you that. It's like pretend thing work that we do. You know? Yeah. Hey.

Bryan Cantrill:

Fair enough. The... I... It was one, it was interesting to... I think it was last year's.

Bryan Cantrill:

Because, you know, we haven't... Actually, now we are doing this in, like, kind of inadvertently at the same time of year. And in particular, what I should have said is, you know, in my post, I said, you know, the leaves are falling and so on. The Halloween decorations are up. And a World Series game is being played.

Bryan Cantrill:

This is not... This is maybe the third year in a row that we've had this during a World Series game in which, neither... Well, I I actually... I'm interested in no team. So as far as I'm concerned, like, Bruiser race World Series is is is excellent.

Adam Leventhal:

Like... Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, why is everyone not here?

Bryan Cantrill:

Exactly. So we're missing all of our Rays fans are unable to join us. Yeah. The... But, yeah, it was it was...

Bryan Cantrill:

I want to re... I... Okay. One of the thing I learned from relistening to it, which I was doing actually as I was sweeping the leaves yesterday. The...

Bryan Cantrill:

One, I have done a very poor job. You know, we... We've kind of asked this for a couple years running, like, are the recommendations from previous books in the box that you have read? And, I... For me, it's a zero.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I didn't...

Adam Leventhal:

From last year?

Bryan Cantrill:

For a... A year... From last year. Now for a couple of reasons, I I blame my family, actually, as as anyone rightfully should. I...

Bryan Cantrill:

You know, the fam asked me about, you know, as we're getting to the holiday season, I'm like, listen, if you want gift ideas for me, go listen to Books in the Box and buy... I'll take any of those books that are recommended that I haven't read. But I think listening to a podcast is like... Think people are willing and actually... Oh, as it turns out, I'm learning in real time that my wife is actually listening to this episode.

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, I blame the children, not not my lovely spouse who who bears no culpability here. I really wanna... I... I'm sorry. I'm...

Bryan Cantrill:

This Richard

Adam Leventhal:

will edit that out. Don't worry.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Exactly. I would like to, you know, I, maybe we should have... Maybe we've over publicized this episode. We always wondered exactly who listens and well, now we we we knew it.

Bryan Cantrill:

No. No. Some things. So I'll blame my children then, not my lovely spouse. The but I think asking them to listen to a podcast was just like, look, I'm trying to get you a gift, not listen to a podcast.

Bryan Cantrill:

They tell you, I told you this burn that they've got that, like, I wanted an answer, not a podcast episode. Yeah. Did I tell this?

Adam Leventhal:

Very good. Yes. Brutal.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Absolutely brutal. And, of course, like, one of them dropped this and the other two looked like, oh my god. We've just learned of penicillin. Like, this is...

Bryan Cantrill:

Humanity has made an important breakthrough. Like, why did I not think of this insult much earlier? So know that's a good deal. So I think that they're like, you know what? I'm actually like, can you give me like a Amazon, like a key to

Tom Lyon:

spreadsheet, please?

Adam Leventhal:

I was thinking more like a like a link. Know I'm thinking

Bryan Cantrill:

much like a link. You click on not actually. This is exact So I I... That they're forgiven.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I mean, you know, we do like put notes together. I mean, and by we do

Bryan Cantrill:

those together. Yeah. No. I think exactly. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

I could have pointed out that like, we don't actually have to listen to the episode. You can go consult the notes that that that are thanklessly and laboriously put together by my lovely cohost. But that did not happen. So anyway, here we are. And I...

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, then then I think it was also like we had some, well, I I actually... I think, last year was an important year in that I think we we developed our first impromptu books in the bonfire. And I traditionally feel we should continue. You had not yet read if anyone builds it, everyone I know. I know.

Bryan Cantrill:

I know. So I feel like I was like, wow, this was like an age of innocence before you had hate read this whole thing. So... But I feel like that's... And I got...

Bryan Cantrill:

So I want to get to those candidates as well. I've got some books on the bonfire.

Adam Leventhal:

Well, I did... So I didn't listen to last year's episode, but I did look at the notes. And I was reminded that I did read a a book off of the recommendations from last year, which was Neil Stevenson's termination shock. So

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, did you? Okay. Yeah. How was it?

Adam Leventhal:

I really enjoyed it. I guess it's Clify, like climate science fiction. Cool. Cool. Why?

Adam Leventhal:

No. That's that's the thing. I didn't just make

Bryan Cantrill:

that GitHub, a hub of Git? Mhmm. Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

A Clify. Okay. So Clify, tell me more about Clify.

Adam Leventhal:

You know, it's like the well, of course, sea levels. We all know sea level is going to rise 50 feet because we can't get up our asses and recycle. And we're too busy building data centers and burning down the Amazon. So, you know, it's it's it's sort of like it's science fiction, but you're like, no, I get it. Like, I understand.

Adam Leventhal:

Like, this is this is what going to be my future. I understand the point you're making. And it was great. It was a... It felt very...

Adam Leventhal:

I I think I had read... What's the other Neil Stephenson book I had read?

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, Crash. Right. Crash. Okay. I'm not sure if you're just covering your tracks very occasionally here.

Bryan Cantrill:

But Snow Track was recently sent to me in the office from an unknown No. Benefactor.

Adam Leventhal:

No. Wait. This is... This was the book that the, like Yes. Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

Go on. That woman you were dating was like, you have to read this to understand what we're building back in like 1999 or something.

Bryan Cantrill:

So amazingly, I actually told the story on this episode last year. Yes. And then... But I I I admitted that I was dating this woman briefly. It was more that I I think I I I described it as as...

Bryan Cantrill:

I didn't I didn't say friend. Definitely didn't use that word. Can't remember what your word I used but did not speak. But yes. No.

Bryan Cantrill:

It was that when I had discovered Snow Crash, I had discovered some important trade secret. This was was there. The company was there. Which we we... Then we...

Bryan Cantrill:

You and I last year reflected was like an Abbott and Costello routine, which immediately had me thinking, of course, of you can see everything.

Adam Leventhal:

Yes.

Bryan Cantrill:

And the You Can See Everything, you know, I think we talked about this last time. I mean, obviously extraordinary film. But we talked about the the fact that the 40 Gaussian splatting is in You Can See Everything. And I was kind of trying to whisper to Bridget that, like, we have a podcast episode of this. Shut up.

Bryan Cantrill:

Understandably. You know, someone in... I was in New York last week and encountered many fans of the pod, including someone for whom that was like... That was the episode that they just

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, great.

Bryan Cantrill:

It was great. Yeah. I think it's great. I I... You know, I I love when we...

Bryan Cantrill:

Because we kinda have these spin the wheel episodes that you and I enjoy, but I don't necessarily know how other people... Not always

Adam Leventhal:

reflected in the statistics. Yes?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Exactly. Not always reflected in the statistics. And, we... I love that episode.

Bryan Cantrill:

I thought it was super interesting, and, it really informed my viewing of you can see everything. So a lot of... And then... But people also in New York asking about Books in the Box. So they were...

Bryan Cantrill:

I don't think I hallucinated all of this, but maybe some. I don't know. Who knows? Anyway, very, very excited for for Books in the Box. Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

So you, had... Oh, so this... So snow snow crash arrives with the tagline, it is time that you read this. Maybe it's from her. You know?

Bryan Cantrill:

That would be amazing. That be extremely creepy.

Adam Leventhal:

Well, so so I also got you a book recently. Did you also not read that?

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. I I... You know, I was actually... I I knew this You were

Adam Leventhal:

you were ready for this. Do have a prepared statement from the list?

Bryan Cantrill:

I do have a... Hold on. I now am reading from a prepared statement. Okay. So this is the every...

Bryan Cantrill:

Everything store. I'm hoping that's the everything store and not like second book you've gotten me. My mind is racing. Like, wait a minute. Has he gotten me only one book?

Bryan Cantrill:

I hope there's not more than one book. Okay. This is the everything store. Yeah. And, yeah, I owe...

Bryan Cantrill:

I I vow to you to read the everything store Between Now and Books in the Box seven. No. This is like a... Because I mean, I've heard such great things about this book. And Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

What... Had you... You'd read it a while ago, I think?

Adam Leventhal:

I read it on my on my honeymoon in 2014.

Bryan Cantrill:

Did that... That was my

Adam Leventhal:

beach read in Bora Bora.

Bryan Cantrill:

There's a beach read in Bora Bora. Interesting. And how... Is it recommended as honeymoon reading?

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, yeah. Was great.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I mean, I don't... Don't ask me any, like, detail. I mean, the only details I retain are very weird ones. Like, the original name of Amazon was gonna be relentless.com.

Adam Leventhal:

And to this day, if you go to relentless.com, it forwards to Amazon. You're like, that's... It's it's... That's... Because that's so annoying.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That is so on the nose. That is so on the nose. Really interesting. Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

I did... I I don't mean to act so surprised because why why should I be surprised that a delightful fact is in this book that you have deemed so important as to thrust into my hands? No. I I I... It's been on the queue for a long time.

Bryan Cantrill:

It is... Do you have a physical queue? Like, what do you have a physical stack

Adam Leventhal:

No. Somewhere?

Bryan Cantrill:

No. No. Right. Because you had the... Like, the whole kind of Kindle thing.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Well, I do I do Kindle books, but I I have a I have a more efficient stack, which is what I do is I put them on hold at the library, then I forget to... At the... On the, like, ebook library or whatever.

Bryan Cantrill:

Right.

Adam Leventhal:

And then I forget to take them out, and then I don't read them. So I work I work through the queue very efficiently that way.

Bryan Cantrill:

I thought... Wasn't your your kind of library versus purchase disposition? Isn't that based on a hate read versus a... Like, don't you have like a certain threshold where, like, you know, actually like this book, I'm gonna buy it.

Adam Leventhal:

Sometimes I buy the sometimes I buy the book after the fact.

Bryan Cantrill:

Just so like a reward to up to the author to like you've...

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Here's your here's your eight fifty or whatever.

Bryan Cantrill:

Here's your eight fifty. Exactly. Yeah. So I've got a stack... Good news is I've got a stack of books.

Bryan Cantrill:

Bad news is the... And this is just the the stack has been tidied, obviously not by me. And the largest book has been put to the bottom of the stack, which sadly right now is the store. So I've got... It's kind of like a...

Bryan Cantrill:

It's a bit of a Jenga puzzle to get it.

Adam Leventhal:

That's what I'm saying. Physical obstacle.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's an... And even like the Jenga of getting... It's like just enough put impedance. You know what mean? Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's... This is kinda like the equivalent of like the cats on me. It's like, can't you just get the cat off you? It's like, no. Like, I obviously can't do that.

Bryan Cantrill:

But I I... Obviously, I could just, like, move... So that... Not much of an excuse, but it's... I'm just trying to be I'm just trying to be to be straight with you.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's but that... I actually... I I gave that book a long look along with several other books that have remained on the queue for more than a year. And I feel like that's a... This is telling me something that maybe some of these books are are not.

Bryan Cantrill:

But I I can't but I can't quite summon the guts to get them off the queue either. So, so we stand. Okay. So the, in Snow Crash, I don't where... What's Snow Crash?

Bryan Cantrill:

Anonymous benefactor who's believing in this time that I read it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure this year's gonna be the year, but who knows? I could be there. And so you really enjoyed...

Bryan Cantrill:

And sorry, what was the...

Adam Leventhal:

Termination Shock. Termination Shock. Yeah. It was it was very kind of nostalgic of reading Snow Crash, like, from... You know, because I had read it, you know, twenty five years ago or whatever.

Adam Leventhal:

And, you know, I I enjoyed kind of reminiscing in the style, but then in a in a totally different universe and and story. It was great. I really I really enjoyed it.

Bryan Cantrill:

And then the other thing I didn't... I... You know, a recommendation that you made last year was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, yeah. Have you also not read that?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yes. But that's because Fucking pearls before swine. Why don't we bother? Go... Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

You should... Okay. You need to go listen to yourself from last year. I actually... Why was I equivocal?

Bryan Cantrill:

You were very equivocal.

Adam Leventhal:

Okay. I think you're right. I... Because I love...

Bryan Cantrill:

You were very equivocal.

Adam Leventhal:

The first... You loved

Bryan Cantrill:

it and then you're like, and then like not so much. I'm like, I... It came out so milk so I didn't know what to

Adam Leventhal:

think. Yeah.

Tom Lyon:

Fair

Bryan Cantrill:

enough. I definitely think, like, pearls before swine. It's a little... I mean, I'll accept the swine, but like pearl, I'm I'm a little... I'm I'm I'm unaccepting of the...

Bryan Cantrill:

Slop, I think. Slop.

Adam Leventhal:

I thought you'd

Bryan Cantrill:

have been into that. Slop, store swine. Is.

Adam Leventhal:

You read much fiction? That's the other danger because that another fiction recommendation.

Bryan Cantrill:

It is. I don't. It's like not a point of principle, really. I just don't. And I I get...

Bryan Cantrill:

I... And I... Like, I definitely have and I have enjoyed it. And I I... But, you know, I didn't actually realize the way you were talking about it.

Bryan Cantrill:

I didn't realize it was fiction

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Until going back and checking in on it. I'm like, oh, this is fiction. But don't read it. I think I I... Look.

Bryan Cantrill:

It looks good. So it's interesting to know that, like, it could... In your memory, it's just kind of unequivocally good.

Adam Leventhal:

Or No. I mean, I I I... Like, I would rec... Like, I recommended it then, and I would recommend it. But I do remember being, like, a little disappointed after how fantastic the beginning was.

Adam Leventhal:

And then it was just, you know, a a story that I enjoyed very much, but, like, it wasn't as magical. It was one of these ones where, you know, like, when you're really reading every word rather than just sort of, like reading quickly. Like, when you're really kind of luxuriating in the in the language, like, that's how I felt.

Bryan Cantrill:

You will be pleased to know that you are sticking to that story. Okay. That is exactly how you described it, Les.

Adam Leventhal:

Jeez. Alright. Way too consistent.

Bryan Cantrill:

No. This is gonna be like, hey. That... That's the... It's clearly honest.

Bryan Cantrill:

There you go. Really soaking in it. So really... It sounds like it's very well written. So...

Bryan Cantrill:

And and I I... You know, this swine will take a a... But but but put those pearls around this old piggy neck. I mean, that can

Adam Leventhal:

Part part of this, like, you... I don't think you listen to audiobooks instead of you kinda listen to podcasts, but I would say I often have, like, a nonfiction book that I'm reading and then, a fiction audiobook or So I'll sort of have one of... And also, I start reading two non fiction at the same time, I get confused. I'm like, Why is George Washington launching AWS or whatever? I start mixing up these things.

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. Crossing the Delaware to... For the... There's a there's a data center in Delaware. Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

Makes sense.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I... You know, I like that. I like that approach. And that... It sounds good.

Bryan Cantrill:

And it seemed it seemed great. But I... There there was that. And there were some other really good recommendations last year. I have taken none of them.

Bryan Cantrill:

So I would like to I would like to apologize for that. The... I'm not sure if it quite counts, but I read... I... Before Books in the Box last year, I had eccentric orbits had arrived, I had not read it.

Bryan Cantrill:

I read it. I really enjoyed it. Was kind nice about... That had a lot of just like up the fairway for me. I mean, you've got kind of like corporate malpractice, hard tech, you know, funding disaster.

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, it's just like there was all sorts of things and some terrific leaders and technologists as well. That was good. Nice. So I've got a couple. Do you wanna...

Bryan Cantrill:

Do

Adam Leventhal:

you Jack, kick it off.

Bryan Cantrill:

Don't you kick it off? Alright. So I will kick it off with... Disappointed that my children had not taken my my advice to listen to my own podcast episode, I guess, and understanding. I decided to read a book that I'd gotten for one of them on on Christmas morning, which was Setting the Table by Danny Meyer.

Bryan Cantrill:

And have you have you read this? You know, Meyer, Shake Shack Guy, the restaurateur. Danny Meyer is a restaurateur. Setting the Table is is... I think his first book is definitely a widely read book in hospitality.

Bryan Cantrill:

And but I think it's got lessons far beyond it. And I had I really enjoyed this book and it's short, very readable. I kind of came to the conclusion that like tech needs a lot more of a hospitality mindset. That the hospitality industry kind of gets denigrated. And this book was a little bit about getting it to stand on its own two feet.

Bryan Cantrill:

And it was really good. It was very well written. And I think it really, he talks about the kind of the three legged stool of employees and customers and investors and kind of how you balance those three things. And I... Because you...

Bryan Cantrill:

The thing that's interesting about hospitality is that everybody has a choice with kind of every transaction. You know, like you... You're not locked in really. And as a result, you kind of have to earn it back every time. And it gives like in companies that do entities that do a poor job earning it back, people leave.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I just feel like tech could use a lot more of a lot more hospitality.

Adam Leventhal:

That sounds great. And and and has your son also read this book now or or still...

Bryan Cantrill:

You know, unclear. I think that he... I I definitely have his copy right now. So like it would be... He would be...

Bryan Cantrill:

Think I got him a second copy. I I also got him a book on football that he's much more interested in. You know, I'd be... We'll we'll get there on that one. I would enjoy this when he gets to it.

Bryan Cantrill:

Very, very good book and pretty broadly read in the hospitality industry. Nice. That was that was a winner. To Ron Robin, or do you want to? Sure.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'll go.

Tom Lyon:

I've got

Bryan Cantrill:

a lot more, but

Adam Leventhal:

I'm sure you're you're going to keep going for a while. But I have one that I recommend was Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Have you read this?

Bryan Cantrill:

Wait. Wait. No. We talked about this. You were reading this, I think, when we were together at reunion.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, right? Right.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Or someone was reading it.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I think, you know, our our... My my friend Alyssa, who is a infectious disease doctor, may have been talking about it with me, but she had recommended it to me. And so, yeah, it was great. I knew almost nothing about tuberculosis.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. So it... It's fascinating, you you know, in particular the way that, you know, income disparity, wealth disparity, and tuberculosis go so hand in hand. So, like, it's... It is almost exclusively a a poor world problem.

Adam Leventhal:

So very interesting, all of the secondary and tertiary effects around tuberculosis and tuberculosis policy. So that was great.

Bryan Cantrill:

Now is that always true? I assume that prior to penicillin... Penicillin... Is that what ultimately... Or is there other antibiotics?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah, exactly. It's one antibiotic and then the next and the next. And then there's drug resistant and then extremely drug resistant and cocktails of them and so forth. And it's also one of these just terrifying blights on humanity where you're like, I hope all these antibiotics keep on working. Also we know they won't.

Adam Leventhal:

And Yeah. We also don't know what's next necessarily when the ones that we have stop. So, you know, a little a little, you know, kind of dark as you think ahead about... Yeah. While you're reading this thing and and you you kind of see the future of the rest of the world.

Adam Leventhal:

But, you know, sadly, the point... A big point of the author is, like, well, the rich world is gonna be fine. And it's it's always, always, always the the poor world that that suffers, you know, from disease, lack of access to health care, lack of access to medicine and so forth.

Bryan Cantrill:

And so prior to antibiotics, you would... Wouldn't you go on a mountain air to recover from?

Adam Leventhal:

Yes. So there's all this book has all kinds of of crazy facts Well, along those right.

Bryan Cantrill:

There are

Adam Leventhal:

all these kind of crack cures about like, you know, you want dry air, you know, and that. And then there are all of these weird connections. Like, for example, like the Stetson hat. The Stetson hat. Stetson, the eponymous Stetson, I think he was from New Jersey, has tuberculosis, moves out west to get to the dry air of of like Texas, you know, starts making hats.

Adam Leventhal:

And like, this is the Stetson hat connection to tuberculosis. So like To tuberculosis. Wow. Early on the book, like, emphasizes how strongly like everything is to break the how there are tendrils of tuberculosis. I think there was another great one, like the statehood of New Mexico, where in order like New Mexico as a territory didn't have sufficient population.

Adam Leventhal:

So they set themselves... Oh no, it would not only insufficient population, but but for the political climate of the era, too much indigenous population. So they start pitching themselves as a great place for tuberculosis sufferers to come and recuperate. And so this is how they bolstered their more white caucasian Little marketing campaigns.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. A little marketing campaign to the the tuberculosis effect afflicted. Well, you know, I think just as just as, you know, you nutmeggers are always going on about whale oil. I feel that that that tuberculosis recovery is a big part of the Western New because I feel like in Colorado, there was... This was often the case where you had someone that was coming to that kinda high mountain air, the dry air for recovery from tuberculosis.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm just wondering if there's any truth. Is there any truth to that? Is that like... Is that

Adam Leventhal:

actually better for I think I think not particularly. I think like

Bryan Cantrill:

100% quack.

Adam Leventhal:

Temporary. I I I don't know what percent, but, like, I think that, you know, sometimes people get better and sometimes they didn't. And sometimes, you know, changing environment helped. But I... But but...

Adam Leventhal:

No. And in fact, like, people... You know, it was just a... They would they would have not... Inactive tuberculosis for a long time.

Adam Leventhal:

People still have tuberculosis that kind of goes into remission and it comes back and so forth if it's not all wiped out by the medications. That actually got me on like a tuberculosis kick. Oh, there we go. So then what did I read after that? I read another book about tuberculosis called The Phantom Plague.

Adam Leventhal:

This was like... I think like everything is tuberculosis was much more someone... Like, not an infectious disease doctor, but rather a a writer of nonfiction, you know, in John Green discovering this topic and researching it deeply. Phantom Plague is not necessarily top of my list in terms of recommendations. It was definitely like in the footnotes.

Adam Leventhal:

Right? So...

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. Whether this is like one practitioner to another? Or is this what they do?

Adam Leventhal:

Exactly. It it was much more like... This this was by a medical doctor, much more, you know, deeply researched, rooted in in statistics, focused a lot on the slums of India and building codes and, like, you know, how, you know, basically, some of these slums had almost been optimized for the spread of tuberculosis and and extremely drug resistant tuberculosis just, again, based on moneyed interests and so forth. So it was like, hey, if you're was this too fun? And and too...

Bryan Cantrill:

Too too uplifting? Everything... I like everything is tuberculosis, but I

Adam Leventhal:

don't know. Was a little uplifting. It was a little... She find it too light.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I I actually prefer my cli fi feels a little bit... Grounds me a little bit. So is... I do I... Is this BiFi?

Bryan Cantrill:

What do we do? Do we have... Or I guess this is not this is not a fi. So... Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, but but so this is is this denser? I mean, is this a... Do you always have those things that that you're like, actually, as it turns out, I just wanted a cocktail conversation on this. I actually didn't wanna take a course on this. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

I usually, like, had that realization six weeks into taking a course on something where it's like, I have made a terrific I've made a horrific mistake. Let me

Adam Leventhal:

say there were no there were no Stetson hats in in the face Right. Of

Bryan Cantrill:

No delightful Stetson hats here. This is all like just grim statistics about the diabolical urban planning

Adam Leventhal:

in India. Fascinating. But, you know, if everything tuberculosis up your alley, if you're getting into another tuberculosis kick like I did, then that's a good follow-up.

Bryan Cantrill:

And was that are you TB'd out at that point? Are you just like, and good news cured me of my own tuberculosis interests? I mean, I... Know it's myself cured.

Adam Leventhal:

I had a third book lined up that I didn't get to, so I guess that's the answer.

Bryan Cantrill:

There you go. Audible book. I... Book. Is that...

Bryan Cantrill:

That was the third one in the library or how? Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Yeah. I take...

Bryan Cantrill:

I I do all my books at the library.

Adam Leventhal:

I don't know. I have a great library.

Bryan Cantrill:

No. It's great. Libraries are terrific.

Adam Leventhal:

That. You know, the only books I buy, like physical books, are ones that I think I'm going to loan out. Like, you know, I'm sure we got an Eric Reese recommendation coming up from you. So I have that in a physical copy because Yes. Then I'm sure I'm gonna, like, hand it to to the next person who's gonna read it.

Adam Leventhal:

And also, like, it it it was a twenty five month waiting list at the library.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, really?

Adam Leventhal:

Think at I the time. I think often when when books are like new and hot, I'll go on to Libby and discover it's like, oh, this year? No. Definitely not happening this year, but maybe next year.

Bryan Cantrill:

Maybe next year, kid. Okay. So not... Maybe not to bury the lead on that one. That's Incorruptible by Eric Rees.

Bryan Cantrill:

It is on my list. I... Is you have not read that yet. Is that right?

Adam Leventhal:

Have not. Correct.

Bryan Cantrill:

Have not. Yeah. It's it's very good. It is talking about how... Looking at how companies become...

Bryan Cantrill:

Lose their way, lose their mission, become corrupted, and what companies can do to be incorruptible. And it was really, really fascinating. A lot of interesting experience anecdotes, but very, very germane for Oxide. It felt like, wow. Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

Is this book been sent to us from the future. This is... It feels, very apropos. And, it was really good. I I think very eye opening.

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, I think that, you know, one of the things that is that... And this is the part of the... And we will have at some point, hopefully, we'll have Eric on to kind of talk about this because I think one of the part of the reason he wrote the book is that every company that does some of these things like setting yourself up as a public benefit corporation and so on, feels like they're doing something completely bonkers that no one has ever conceived of before. And this book helps to stitch some of this together into like actually, lots of actually people are doing things like this. It's not just you and the book has been has found, I think it's a great book.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I very well footnoted and ended up really diving into a bunch of different rabbit holes that were really helpful. Yeah, very, it could end up being an extremely relevant book for Oxide because it came along as kind of just the right time to open our eyes to some of the things that that other companies are doing. So really, really good book, I thought.

Adam Leventhal:

Awesome. Are are there examples, like, from... That stood out from the book in terms of like Oh, yeah. Companies that have maintained... Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, companies that have done it well, to be clear.

Bryan Cantrill:

The companies that have done it well is still a bit of a... Yeah. Mean, yes. First of all, there are lots of examples of that where you have companies that you and oftentimes, they are either... I mean, well, they're private, just makes it easier.

Bryan Cantrill:

They are controlled by a foundation, which is really interesting. Novartis, if I'm... If memory is serving is one of the the kind of the examples where, Novartis ends up, and I'm hoping I got that example right, but the, they end up, being able to serve their mission in a way that that would not have been done otherwise. And the because of the way they were controlled by Novo Nordisk, I should be having the book open on my lap as I'm speaking about it. But they were able to continue with drug research that others would have abandoned.

Bryan Cantrill:

And they were able to do that because of the way the company is controlled, the governance of the company, they are controlled by a mission driven foundation effectively. And what that allowed them to go do is there was a drug that everyone wanted to abandon because it was just not showing promise, but they felt that this was a vector that merited continued exploration and the kind of the next permutation or the next trial, and I'm sorry, I'm butchering the story ended up yielding enormous results and that ended up being Ozempic. And so it makes the case, it seems that like this was Ozempic, we have Ozempic because a company was focused on something other than its immediate profitability, but was balancing its profitability with this kind of long term mission. And how do you create structures? Because I think the other thing is like, this needs to be done in a...

Bryan Cantrill:

You have to generate shareholder value. But it's indisputable that Ozempic has generated shareholder value. So how do you have that longer term disposition so you can generate that longer term shareholder value? And what kind of structures do you need? And then there are plenty of examples where, to the contrary, where companies, of course, acted in their short term interest to their own detriment.

Bryan Cantrill:

And one that was really stood out there is, Jeff Lawson, who was the CEO of of Twilio. Have you ever interacted with him? No. No. The folks that...

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, he is someone who people... This is like one of these people when people work for Lawson, they really, have got extraordinary allegiance to him, and they really feel like they did their best work working with him. But Lawson had, negotiated, super voting in his company. This is like one of the cautionary tales from Incorruptible, had negotiated super voting that expired after seven years as kind of a negotiating position. And one of the problems that Eric Reese points out is like, well, now it's like not the mission, but like the person.

Bryan Cantrill:

And so, it was something like a hundred and ninety one days after supervoting expired, the board fired him. And they and they shouldn't have. Like, that was a mistake for the board to have fired him. So I... In Reese's retelling anyway.

Bryan Cantrill:

But anyway, really interesting book, very thought provoking. We will for sure have a... An episode on this in our future. So Nice. I don't know if we'll be able to wait until you get it from the library though.

Adam Leventhal:

That sounds No. No. I have I have a... I bought a copy because it

Bryan Cantrill:

was good. Oh, there you go. Oh, because of this.

Adam Leventhal:

Right. There

Bryan Cantrill:

you That's... I guess that that was the point you're making.

Adam Leventhal:

Exactly.

Bryan Cantrill:

This this is so... Yeah. No. So no tuberculosis. And I guess I did go on a...

Bryan Cantrill:

You know, I went on a little bit of a governance kick and read a couple of other books on PBCs that were I think actually similar similar arc to like, oh, like a PBCs are really interesting. I should read this monograph from a law professor on PBCs. I was better off at in. I need to stop that at like the Stetson hat level.

Adam Leventhal:

The Malcolm Gladwell form.

Bryan Cantrill:

The Malcolm Gladwell form of corporate governance. You know, actually some interesting books there. So that was good stuff. Do you have any other of my list that you are going to front run like in Croftable? No.

Adam Leventhal:

Sorry. You keep... Sorry to pull that one.

Bryan Cantrill:

No, it was good. That was a very good segue. Do you have... How about you? Do you a...

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Have I another good one. I've only just started it. So obviously, this is a big risk, but I feel comfortable doing it because it's very Okay. Am reading the Morris Chang autobiography.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. This is what you say. You were doing this last year with having an LLM translated.

Adam Leventhal:

I know. But but look, I I was doing it last year and I was reading it, like, in, like, in the browser, and that was basically impossible. Like, I couldn't do it.

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. Easy. The way you described it is not like, how is that? Like

Adam Leventhal:

No. It's awful. So now it's awful. Little funny story. So I was working with Claude.

Adam Leventhal:

Was like, hey Claude, I have this ebook. Like I have bought it. Like I would like to download it. And Claude like download.

Bryan Cantrill:

Claude's like may I train on it? Oh, I'm sorry. Is that that that is that rude of me to say?

Adam Leventhal:

Pretty funny. Like, it it downloaded... It helped me download the first chapter. And then and then it had a little bit of a pearl clutching moment where it was like, wait a minute. Wait You just had me circumvent DRM and I have suddenly have copyright concerns.

Adam Leventhal:

And I was like, Claude,

Bryan Cantrill:

do Okay. It. A little rich. Little rich coming from the Y.

Adam Leventhal:

Copyright concerns. You have copyright concerns. Okay. So it's like, look, I download the first chapter, but that's all I'm willing to do. I'm like, talk about...

Adam Leventhal:

Like, what the fuck? And it's like, nah. I just... You know, good luck with it. I don't feel comfortable doing this.

Adam Leventhal:

I'm

Bryan Cantrill:

like Okay. Well, I'm I'm I'm just gonna go to ChatGPT. You know that. So, like, it's... You're not actually preventing anything from happening.

Bryan Cantrill:

ChatGPT is down for whatever, and you and I both know it.

Adam Leventhal:

So It It was was a little bit of a challenge, like getting it onto my computer, did it. And then I had like a bunch of a pile of different LLMs translated, including some local models that I was running on my framework desktop. So Oh, Yeah. It it was it was pretty interesting to run and then cobbled together a translation. And now I'm about halfway through book one, you know, which covers his his life up to age 33.

Adam Leventhal:

So...

Bryan Cantrill:

Wow. So this is all at TI, right?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

And how is it so far?

Adam Leventhal:

It's great. I mean, I'm really enjoying it. And like, you know, there are adorable little aphorisms that kind of... That come through from from the Chinese. And so I also had it, like, kind of footnote things when it's like, am I translating some Chinese idiom that I don't...

Adam Leventhal:

Am I, like, reading a translation of it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. So got some additional context there. One of the things that you'll like is there is apparently a old Chinese proverb about ax sharpening, which I know a little late because you already had your

Bryan Cantrill:

talk. I mean, I have already I already have 18 slides on that in a talk, but it could have been 19.

Adam Leventhal:

Could could have been 19. If you ever get to talk in China...

Bryan Cantrill:

What of the Chinese? Someone shouted from the audience on my axe sharpening, and I'm like, I'm glad you asked. Next slide. Next slide. Exactly.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. And?

Adam Leventhal:

And and nothing. I was like, it's the same aphorism.

Bryan Cantrill:

The same aphorism. Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

Pasted a 100 times, but I think it may have predated the other ones. And I don't think Lincoln ever said that. So that... That's what I have for you. But Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I... But as

Adam Leventhal:

expected, Morris Chang is terrific. I'm I'm really enjoying the early life stuff, but but looking forward to volume two, which covers more of TSMC and all stuff.

Bryan Cantrill:

I really admire your determination to get this thing that... Yeah, it feels like this should be translated. It feels like, I mean...

Adam Leventhal:

Right. Right. Mean, it's not a short volume and he actually references interesting book. I got to look up the title, but it's by Albert Yu about the history of Intel and that that was written

Bryan Cantrill:

in Chinese and has been translated. So it was written in China, a history of Intel written in Chinese and translated.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. By overview, I can pull that up. Yeah. But... Yeah.

Adam Leventhal:

So that that that that if I if I get in a tuberculosis like kick, that's the next one on the list.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay, I've got the yeah, I would be really curious. I mean, I

Adam Leventhal:

guess about the

Bryan Cantrill:

Creating the digital future. And when was that? That is so that it sounds like it's a memoir of his years at Intel. Is that right?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Must have been in the nineties. Like... Yeah. 1998.

Bryan Cantrill:

Creating the digital future.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm very interested to read what

Bryan Cantrill:

the digital future was. Innovation at Intel.

Adam Leventhal:

Yes. Could...

Bryan Cantrill:

Be fair, not a recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's right.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right. Could be next year's Books in the Bonfire. We don't actually That's right. That's right. But, yeah, interesting.

Bryan Cantrill:

It does look actually... That... This is interesting. I do feel that... I mean, I think we we've said this before that, there are...

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, Intel doesn't necessarily have... Mean, there's a a noise biography that I've intended to read. Mean, there's... But the the... It's spotty about kind of the history of Intel.

Bryan Cantrill:

So I'll be I'll be... I'll take a memoir. And

Adam Leventhal:

this genre, I mean, felt like this with the Steve Jobs books that we read and then the sun book that we had... What was it? The High Noon, that that book about sun that I read.

Bryan Cantrill:

High Noon has come up so frequently in this podcast, I gotta tell you. Like, High Noon should be... The author of High Noon should be thrilled that they cast such a long shadow in the podcast.

Adam Leventhal:

I am sure that often...

Bryan Cantrill:

But whenever it comes up, we're always kinda like, the book is fine. It's like not great.

Adam Leventhal:

Well, I just mean these these histories of companies while the history of the company is still being written is so interesting. Right? Like what... It is interesting. What what will this book about Intel in 1998 when Intel was, I don't know, like, certainly in its ascendancy, like in its descendants for sure.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Adam Leventhal:

Like, will that be like? Anyway, the the Morris Chang biography is delivering after arduously. Arduously. Now I now I happen to have a PDF. Just saying.

Bryan Cantrill:

Because, like, let's face it, you spent some time sharpening the axe for it. You are you are now ready for the next mem... Taiwanese memoir that is not available in translation.

Adam Leventhal:

That's

Bryan Cantrill:

right. Thank you very much. I will be with that one. I'll have very quickly. So it's a good segue to Steve Jobs in Exile.

Bryan Cantrill:

So this was a book that came out. I was extremely excited for it. This is a book about Next. And we've, you know, we've talked a lot about the the history of of Steve Jobs at Next and what a long shadow I think you and I both think it casts at Apple and how the... I mean, I just think Steve Jobs at Next is like the whole ballgame for the history of Jobs and being disappointed that the Isaacson book, treats that so lightly, and obviously both really enjoying Randall Strauss' Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing.

Bryan Cantrill:

So I was really excited to read this book. This is not quite books in the bonfire. What's books in the mid fire? I feel like... You don't mean like...

Bryan Cantrill:

I feel like this is the, the... And and by the way, when you don't read this next next year, I'm not going to insult you by saying that, like, what are we even doing here? This is pros before swine because I understand that I'm giving a very lukewarm recommendation to this. I just wanna say this. But I I think that people should read it because the history is so interesting.

Bryan Cantrill:

And it opened my eyes, I think, to some of the content that is... It like the... I ended up watching the entire Steve Jobs launching Next at Davies Hall in San Francisco. Like, it's like two hours long. And it was...

Bryan Cantrill:

And I don't know that it it... It's mesmerizing. And so there are aspects of the story that I... You get a little a little bit of those those primary materials. I gotta tell you, like, as I'm reading it, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be a great compliment to Steve Jobs and the next big thing.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I'm getting this like... Because like even on the cover, it's like the untold story of NeXT. And I'm like, it's just like the... It's the untold story. I mean, it's like, you know what I mean?

Bryan Cantrill:

Like, it's like, okay, well... And it became... I don't... I'm like, I'm not sure he's read it. I'm not sure that Jeffrey Kane read Strauss' book.

Adam Leventhal:

That's crazy.

Bryan Cantrill:

And it's basically like not in the footnotes. I mean, it is referenced. It like finally in, like, page 12 of him saying that no one has bothered to report this important story. He kind of like, there's a footnote to Strauss' book. I'm like, I...

Adam Leventhal:

Nobody has told this story except

Bryan Cantrill:

for this one. Exactly. Right. And so it was a little bit like it was it was odd, honestly. And as a result, I think that Strauss' book is still much better.

Bryan Cantrill:

The the the thing that I did... Now, the the thing that Steve Jobs in Excel has going for it is it's able to tell the entire story because Strauss's book stops in '93 when they have, I think, but they have, I think they have like maybe not yet pivoted to pure software. I mean, it's just as they're pivoting to pure software. And the chapter that we don't have from that book is in Steve Jobs in exile and this kind of pivot to web objects and purely the software. And then of course, the acquisition by Apple, which that I think it's...

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, it's probably worth reading this book for that retelling alone, where Jean Louis Gasse... It's basically the inside story of that, which I... I mean, my memory of that was roughly correct. Namely that Jean Louis Gasse was put a price that was like a fraction of what they paid for for Next. And they like walked away from it and they paid, he wanted like $2.50 or something and they ended up paying like $4.60 or whatever it was for Next.

Bryan Cantrill:

But the thing that was really interesting is that Jobs went, they were each respect... Pitching their respective companies. Jean Louis Gasse is like, they don't have a choice. They're gonna have to buy B and is pretty arrogant Mhmm. In his meeting with Apple.

Bryan Cantrill:

And Jobs comes in with a pitch about why NeXT is the right... I mean, this is Gil Amelio days at Apple, and, I thought it was, so that part of the book was really good, actually. Got me on... I'm not sure if it was from a footnote or not, but definitely got me into a Books in the Bonfire. Jean Louis Gasse also has a memoir called Grateful Geek.

Bryan Cantrill:

This thing sucked.

Adam Leventhal:

Is is is that is that a reference to the geek port on the b box or just just...

Bryan Cantrill:

You know, I think they both have the same root. I think he really likes the word geek.

Adam Leventhal:

Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

And uses it a lot.

Adam Leventhal:

Good for him.

Bryan Cantrill:

So I think that that they do have that in common. This book sucked. I I... There's not there's not a kinder way to say it. Like, I wouldn't say this was like a memoir so much as like a like a kind of like a pile of like receipts on which he'd written notes to himself.

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, it was just it is not well written, not well edited. And and like for someone who has seen so much, it's like he should be able to write a banger of a memoir. Right? I mean, you would think?

Adam Leventhal:

I mean, if you're introspective, that'd be nice. That seems like

Bryan Cantrill:

Introspective would be a nice start. I just feel like I would... Like, just him on be alone would be amazing. He also... Jean Louis Gasse also has like this weird, role in the Theranos case.

Bryan Cantrill:

And like, he's like one of the first prominent people that's trying. He like needs to get regular blood draws. He's excited to the stick and he's kind of the one of the first people to realize like, wait a minute, this is all just like crooked. But it's like, he's a very interesting person, but this thing sucked. And I'm was extremely disappointed.

Bryan Cantrill:

And the Goodreads rating of like 4.1 or whatever, I'm telling you is grossly inflated.

Adam Leventhal:

So... Like all his family and friends. I gotcha.

Bryan Cantrill:

I absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this is of these... Mean, do you do these what you're like, I like I disagree ardently with the like the Amazon rating or whatever. But then you can go like, I thank God I can go click on the two and one star reviews and finally find my people.

Bryan Cantrill:

You know? And I don't care that they're only like eight of the reviews. But like, okay, I'm not like totally crazy. This book basically sucked. So that was...

Bryan Cantrill:

Sean only guesses, sadly. Maybe write a better memoir. That's what I gotta say.

Adam Leventhal:

Good. And... But Steve Jobs Steve Jobs in Exile.

Bryan Cantrill:

Steve Jobs in Exile, I think merits a read for sure. I think I I still... I I believe, like, more ardently than ever that that period is the whole ballgame with Jobs. That there is... That, like, the the period at next is the most interesting part of his career, in part because it is...

Bryan Cantrill:

There's so much struggle. And I... So I think it's worth reading for that bit alone. But it is also a segue to another book on Apple I'm reading.

Adam Leventhal:

Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

Based on a recommendation from, colleagues of ours who... Including Kate Hicks, who worked at Apple, Apple in China. And I'm I'm only about, a third of the way through this. So this is what I'm currently reading. Really, really enjoying this.

Bryan Cantrill:

The... And it also has a history of NeXT coming to Apple, written by Patrick McGee, Financial Times correspondent. And it it... Like so far... And you can see where it's going and where it's going is really interesting.

Bryan Cantrill:

You've got someone else, by the way, that you... I... Your... Everything that you've built to be able to process Taiwanese memoirs quickly may come in handy with Terry Gao

Adam Leventhal:

Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

Of Foxconn.

Adam Leventhal:

Oh, interesting.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. He... Maybe like... You know, maybe maybe he's like our Timu Morris Chang. Maybe we'll get maybe we'll get Terry Gal in here.

Bryan Cantrill:

But also, like, mean, really interesting in terms of basically making Foxconn by lunging on on Apple and on the iMac in particular. So Jobs comes back. And there's this very... I mean, the the way the the kind of the iMac... The development of the iMac is super interesting and is outlined in in detail here about like they wanted...

Bryan Cantrill:

He had these designers that are like any... Okay. Here's our lovely... Like our beautiful design. Design.

Bryan Cantrill:

And And the the mechanical engineers are like, not possible. And Jobs is like, you're all fired. And they... You see, you get like that bad behavior of Jobs and they bring in this next group of mechanical engineers. They're like, no, no, like, let us explain to you why this is not possible.

Bryan Cantrill:

And can we work on modifying this design slightly to make this actually manufacturable? And that ends up being a very important moment. But then the way... And they had the... Like all the different colors.

Adam Leventhal:

Did you have an iMac? No, I didn't.

Bryan Cantrill:

No, no. Because I actually because you...

Adam Leventhal:

I was at the era. Like, I mean, I started You

Bryan Cantrill:

were at the era.

Adam Leventhal:

I started college. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I started college in '97.

Adam Leventhal:

And so like, you know, people definitely had, I think maybe it was like we're talking about like the fruity colored ones, like the Maltzburg.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah, exactly.

Adam Leventhal:

Like '98, '99 or whatever. Can't remember what can, but definitely people had them.

Bryan Cantrill:

And what was your disposition towards them? Did you... Were they

Adam Leventhal:

I mean, I thought they were... I I thought they were cool. Like, I mean, you know, as a, like, as as a Jean Louis Gassay style geek, like, I thought that they were beneath me. Right? Like, I wanted I wanted, like,

Bryan Cantrill:

a big

Adam Leventhal:

boy computer. But in in the same way that, like, I wouldn't Where

Bryan Cantrill:

are the geek, of course? He demands. Exactly.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I needed my new bus and my and my little scuzzy, you know, Terminators or whatever.

Bryan Cantrill:

But Apple in China is actually... I I think you like that a lot. It's very... It's great. I'm really, really enjoying that.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's a paternal tip. Well written. And so that one, I feel I'm far enough in to give the unequivocal recommendation for.

Adam Leventhal:

Nice. That's great. I have one... The last one for me, but... And I will be brief because I already mentioned which is American Poison by Daniel Stein.

Adam Leventhal:

And I I already mentioned this about Alice Hamilton and discovering the the perils of tetraethyl lead. Since I already talked about it, I'll just say it's a great book. Like, I think everyone should read it. It was fantastic.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. This is... And just the... How much leaded gasoline, the damage of leaded gasoline?

Adam Leventhal:

Damage of leaded gasoline everywhere. Like impact... Again, I think one of the things I've retained most is like you put up the graph of violent crime and the graph of eliminating tetraethyl lead from gasoline in various states. And you put

Bryan Cantrill:

it like, very clearly see that.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. You insert a delay of, like, eighteen years, and you see it fall precipitously. So these children who are not exposed to tetraethyl lead anymore don't commit violent crimes. And it is... It's I I don't think it's like a direct causal scientific link, like, I think, but it it...

Adam Leventhal:

The correlation is extraordinarily strong.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That's interesting. So the sequence this one for everything is tuberculosis. And it was this is there a Stetson hat kind of tale in American poison? Was were you looking for something uplifting or you actually were too uplifted after the the plague?

Bryan Cantrill:

How does this kind of dovetail in?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I mean, the the name of the inventor of central athletics is escaping me, but he also invented CFCs, chlorofluorocarcin.

Bryan Cantrill:

Nice. Yeah. This is a slow slow clap for that guy. Hey. Thanks for your service.

Adam Leventhal:

And his boss was Kettering of Sloan Kettering, you know, the cancer research in New York. So arguably sort of a mixed bag for that guy, like maybe putting as many people in the hospital certainly as it is, if not many more, as he was getting out... Getting cured.

Bryan Cantrill:

So... Where's the mixed part of the bag? I'm sure. Oh, mixed part for... Ketter for...

Adam Leventhal:

Sloan Ketter. Like he did he did take some of the money and put it into... Got Someone posted... Thomas Midgley Junior was the was the inventor.

Bryan Cantrill:

This like less of a mixed bag for him. Feels like it's more like the jury's got a back

Adam Leventhal:

on And Mitchly Mitchly was like, it was wild, like the hucksterism there, which was like like he himself was lead poisoned. Like, he he would often be suffering from lead poisoning symptoms and get on stage and do things like... And whether talking about? Whether he... Actually, this is...

Adam Leventhal:

I'm not... Like, the book was not clear on whether he had done this as a stunt or whether it was faked, but claims to have washed his hands in front of the press in tetraethyl lead as a demonstration of how safe it was.

Bryan Cantrill:

Where's the you can see everything with this guy? It feels like we... We've got... In terms of the the March madness for fraud, it feels like we've got some of our, like, our the the early kind of champions there. This is like the jerseys still hang in the arena from from.

Adam Leventhal:

And there's also a legacy of this, which is something called the Kehoe principle. There's a doctor Kehoe who basically helps the tetraethyl led concerns establish the principle that basically it should... You should be innocent till proven guilty. So if you have something that is potentially a harm, like, to society, like, should be up to the government to demonstrate that it is a harm and not to the companies to demonstrate that it is It is no harm. To...

Adam Leventhal:

Now it... I mean, it... And it does call to mind some of the AI stuff where,

Bryan Cantrill:

you know Yes.

Adam Leventhal:

You know, you

Bryan Cantrill:

you you Right.

Adam Leventhal:

You know, it is sort of full speed ahead. Prove me wrong. And it would be nice to be in a regulatory environment where more of that burden to demonstrate the safety insofar as as demonstratable of some of these things. It... That onus is on the companies rather than on the under...

Adam Leventhal:

On a disinterested and under resourced government.

Bryan Cantrill:

I I think for sure, does the analogy kind of break down because presumably the the the... Those that were promoting tetraethyl lead were not actually saying that, by the way, this could kill us all. I mean...

Adam Leventhal:

That's right.

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, doesn't it does it mean mean makes things a little more confusing, think.

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. Mean, if it doesn't kill us all, it will certainly cause a lot more violent crime.

Bryan Cantrill:

You're saying that it's it's a virtual certainty that could kill us all and you're washing your hands in it. Yes. I'm washing my hands in it because it could kill us all. That's why I have to work on it. It's like I am Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

What do words mean?

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. I'm I'm So, I mean, literally both like that. I got here. I got to this to this wonderful, wonderful book from Books in the Bonfire. If if if they build it, everyone will do

Bryan Cantrill:

it. Yeah. If anyone builds it, everyone does. It's interesting.

Adam Leventhal:

That... So that's that's... I got I got to this book from the footnotes of that book, of Futkowski.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Go on. How do you get... Well, because they mentioned... They

Adam Leventhal:

mentioned Midgley Jr, mentioned the Kehoe principle. So like, yeah. I mean... And look. The...

Adam Leventhal:

This... The the Yudkowsky book is such... Like, again, I've talked about that one too, but it is, like, just filled with anecdotes that didn't happen and uses those as evidence. It's like You

Bryan Cantrill:

you know, last year I was concerned that I would read that. And I was concerned that I would need to be like like Odysseus tied to the mast to prevent me from just devouring Yudkowsky's book. Yeah. You don't need to that as it turns out.

Adam Leventhal:

No. Like my...

Bryan Cantrill:

I actually feel like I'm I'm clean and sober, man. I'm not actually like... No temptation. Doesn't... I I I just got back from group.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm not interested, you know? Yeah. I don't need to call my sponsor on that one. Not yet anyway.

Adam Leventhal:

There there is so... I mean, literally, I've given the strongest recommendation possible, which is it led me to this book about Ellis Hamilton. It led me to American Poison. And that's the best thing I can possibly say about this book.

Bryan Cantrill:

It tetraethyl led me to this book about poison. Bravo. Okay. Well, that's that's something. That's American poison.

Bryan Cantrill:

You know? That... Yeah. That's that's something. You know?

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. What else can we say? That that... That's that's something. Interesting.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Well, so I think unrelated. I'm trying to get a segue, but I'm failing. Okay. So here's a book that I feel that you may have read.

Bryan Cantrill:

I feel many, many people have read. It was recommended to me this year by Scott Orner, CFO, and he really earnestly recommended it. I ended up reading it and devouring it. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. Have you read this?

Adam Leventhal:

No, I don't know it.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. So Phil Knight, Nike writes... Written this memoir, Shoe Dog. It's amazing. It is so good.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I feel like lot in this book has been out for a while. Lots of people have read it. I think it helped and I'm probably... Apologies for like undoing this people. I went in with very low expectations.

Bryan Cantrill:

I'm like, alright, so like Phil Knight or I can fill that even write. Turns out Phil Knight can... He's a he's a good writer. And it is really, really interesting. I mean, first of his memoir of just like kind of adrift, honestly, after he was kind of an...

Bryan Cantrill:

He was an athlete, he was a track athlete, and then trying to figure out what was next and very earnestly written and then just kind of discovering these shoes and getting... Originally from Japan and getting traction there. But then his stories of like the near death experiences of Nike are crazy. And there is one anecdote in particular. I don't get this out of this too much of a spoiler, but there's one anecdote that really stuck with me where they are on death's door because they can't offer purely capital reasons.

Bryan Cantrill:

Like, they've got people that wanna buy their shoes and this is like in an era where VC barely exists and VC for shoemakers is like, no way. This is like long before all birds or whatever. God only knows what Phil Knight thinks about all birds. That's really piss him off. But the...

Bryan Cantrill:

So they need capital. And in particular, they've got... They are owed all this by all their... Their stores, but they also owe their suppliers and they end up getting in this liquidity crunch. And they think they're going to be saved because like, oh, thank God, we're owed $50,000 by this company that has told us the check is in the mail.

Bryan Cantrill:

But we bank with them. We have the same bank. And so like, we're saved. And the bank is like, yeah, that check was gonna bounce actually, we don't have the funds. So they're like, we're not saved.

Bryan Cantrill:

We are unsaved. But then they ultimately do get saved. And it's like the whole story is act... Is amazing. I came out with...

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, I don't know what... I don't I don't know what I really thought about Phil Knight or Nike going in. I mean, if like, I don't know, like, pretty, like, good job, nice company. I mean, I don't know, job, guys. I don't I just...

Bryan Cantrill:

I feel like I I don't know that I've, like, really felt... I mean, I I guess, vaguely positive or whatever. But the the... You come out of being like, moly is it was just extraordinary. Really, really, really well done.

Bryan Cantrill:

So Cool.

Adam Leventhal:

I'll check it out. I I I was actually talking about Nike this weekend and, like, the the foundation of Nike. Told me something that you can tell me this is true. They use waffle irons to, like, put tread on shoes? Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

Is that, like... Does everyone know that? I'm the last person to know that.

Bryan Cantrill:

You know, you would know that from... Like, that is, like, very famously and not just apocryphal, but that's part of kind of the Nike lore is is part of that. And the the... They did and he had this kind of absolute legendary coach at Oregon that he that he kind of built Nike with. And he was the one who had the the waffle iron.

Bryan Cantrill:

And... But... That is that is true. And I mean, I think it's there were lots of things that were just, like, unbelievable, that were... That are true.

Bryan Cantrill:

And that that that is that is definitely one of them. That that book is also in, you... Like in Prefontaine. Did you ever watch Prefontaine? Yes.

Adam Leventhal:

That's an old movie. Right?

Bryan Cantrill:

Right. It's an old movie now. Yeah. Is an old movie now. The...

Bryan Cantrill:

That happens. So the... And Bill Bowerman is is his name at Oregon. At the end of Prefontaine... Because Steve Prefontaine is at is at Oregon and dies.

Bryan Cantrill:

Right? And that's like the... It kinda dies. Spoiler. Spoiler alert.

Bryan Cantrill:

Steve Steve Prefontaine is dead. The... But Bill Bellman at the end of that movie is like, hey, I think I just like figured out how to use a waffle iron to make a track shoe. I mean, and that part is a little bit apocryphal, but the the the role of the waffle iron is not apocryphal and absolutely for their But the story is amazing. Mean, again, thought it was extremely well written.

Bryan Cantrill:

And think, again, low expectations are the key to happiness. And I went in with low expectations. Sorry, Scott. Not that I didn't take Scott's question seriously. But, was just kind of blown away by the whole story and, and the grit, the resolve.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I mean, there's so many ways when he, you know, he really believes in standing by people and relationships that I really appreciated and was always grateful for this Japanese bank that ultimately, like, bails him out. He never forgets what that... You know, they kind of stood with him in this very, very dark hour when everything was bouncing. But the company was like had, I mean, and it's so foreign now to think about like, wow, you've got product market fit. The only problem is capital.

Bryan Cantrill:

Like you've got like everything else, you've got a product that people wanna buy that is profitable, but like literally you can't get it there because you're lacking capital. And it was really quite amazing.

Adam Leventhal:

Cool. That sounds great.

Bryan Cantrill:

And then that's a segue to another one. Nice. If you read The Power Law?

Adam Leventhal:

No. Okay.

Bryan Cantrill:

Really good book. So the power law, this is on on the history of venture capital. Sebastian Mallaby. So this is venture capital in the making of the future. I thought this was really...

Bryan Cantrill:

I love this book. That early history of venture capital I find so fascinating. Has kind of the requisite like hits on Fairchild, obviously, and the trader's aid and kind of the dynamics of the trader's aid. It also hits on like the why they are all kind of incentivized to leave Fairchild, which I thought was really interesting. I know you and I are both waiting for the book on Fairchild at least, If not the...

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, what I want is the the Mad Men series that's set in Fairchild in the sixties, which feels like it writes itself. Right? I mean, I know this is like a... I feel like this is a larger demographic. No.

Bryan Cantrill:

You know what? It's the same demographic as the translation from Morris Chang's biography. It's it's the same demographic. It's it's the same one. It's not a huge number.

Adam Leventhal:

Why don't you talk to your buddy, Thomas Tull about this? Have you pitched him yet?

Bryan Cantrill:

You know, I like that idea. I think I'll do it. Okay. I will. I will talk to my good buddy Thomas Tall.

Bryan Cantrill:

And, I'm sure he'll shoot me a look that is that that, expresses embarrassment for us both that I have brought this idea to him. I'm like, it's got... It's a demographic with two people in it. I'll have, you know, at least two, could be more, perhaps dozens more. Yes.

Bryan Cantrill:

As the audience drops in our... Oxide and Friends. Anyway. So that is... But the power law, I I enjoyed.

Bryan Cantrill:

I think you would really like that. I I really... I thought it was well written. Written in 2022, which kind of amazingly is like, oh, man, we need an update for this thing. Because, like, a VC has gone loco since 2022.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. And it feels like you real... But I don't I don't know if an update's forthcoming. I hope it is, but it was it was it was very good. So highly recommended on the power log.

Bryan Cantrill:

We... Are there folks in the chat that have... I'm not sure if we've got other... I know Tom is here, but I wasn't sure if he was gonna...

Adam Leventhal:

Yeah. But if if folks have... You know, put your hand up, if if we get to you, we'll get to you. But there's Tom.

Bryan Cantrill:

There's Tom. Yeah. Pull Tom up. Yep. I'm doing well.

Tom Lyon:

I have a couple of geeky books. This one's about Leventhal.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, okay. Is this... I... Okay. This this has gotta...

Bryan Cantrill:

Yep. Okay. I was gonna say this has gotta be be my big ideas because I... Okay. Go ahead.

Bryan Cantrill:

I've read this book, but, yeah, tell about this one.

Tom Lyon:

Yeah. It's great because he was involved with the Berkeley Community Memory Project, which is probably the first social media online thing. And then also with the Homebrew Computer Company and with Osborne and all kinds of early stuff. How

Bryan Cantrill:

did you get to this book, Tom? Did you get to it via Berkeley? Because I got to it via Osborn. How did you get to it?

Tom Lyon:

I got to it through the Computer History Museum somehow.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, interesting.

Tom Lyon:

I forget who, how, whatever. I actually met Lee there, but that was a separate occasion.

Bryan Cantrill:

I was gonna ask if you if you met him or knew him. He sounds like, I mean, really interesting guy.

Tom Lyon:

Yeah. Very, very low key understated guy. The book, you know, is not particularly well written, but it's full of amazing stuff.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That was fun. That was my conclusion too. It's like, well, you obviously wrote this yourself and that's great. Good for you.

Bryan Cantrill:

Have I have

Tom Lyon:

a a very, very high tolerance for poorly written stuff as long as there's interesting facts.

Bryan Cantrill:

And I think that the... I agree with that. I think this was like, it was not all that well written, but it it was really interesting. And the guy is really interesting. So so Leventhal Adam is like the reason that Oz...

Bryan Cantrill:

I... Like Osbourne does not exist without him. And Osbourne kinda treats him like shit, but he is he is like... I I mean, Tom, correct me if you disagree, but my take on it was like, he was absolutely everything that Osborne did that was worthwhile was happening because of Lee. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Was my read of it.

Tom Lyon:

But even earlier in the home, in the home brew scene, like, I think he pretty much invented using cassette tapes as mass storage for your little computers. Wow. By hacking old modem technology to work on the tapes.

Bryan Cantrill:

I just love how much explanation that will require for my children. They're like, I mean, I'll have to like, okay. First... Okay. Shit.

Bryan Cantrill:

We gotta do cassette tapes first. Okay. This is like a set. It's like, what? No.

Bryan Cantrill:

You made mix tapes for your friends. Or do they could... That's a... That... I mean, what a revelation in terms of...

Bryan Cantrill:

And that was also like the use of cassette tapes was extremely important for that kind of homebrew Commodore PET like era. Right. Yeah. Wow. That's a good one.

Bryan Cantrill:

I really I read that one a couple of years ago. I encountered that one from Adam Osborne's Tell All Hypergrowth, the book that you cannot find because of this podcast. This is the one market that we can unequivocally move, Adam, is the book market for books that are no longer published and that was never published in quantity because the publisher threatened to sue him. And so he's like, screw it. I'm gonna self publish and put the letter as the first page.

Bryan Cantrill:

You can find the PDF. I know we've got the PDF. We should get the PDF out there. I know I know Claude's gonna be at the two two... There's gonna be too much plural plural clutching from Claude, but chat GBT will get me the PDF.

Tom Lyon:

So I have another book. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Yeah. Give me that one.

Tom Lyon:

It's about the development of the lean lean forward language. Have you followed this stuff?

Bryan Cantrill:

No. Oh, okay. I have not thought... I'm really curious on this. Tell me more because I...

Bryan Cantrill:

This has become actually now extremely important. So, yeah, So tell me

Tom Lyon:

basically, math is being revolutionized even before AI by this Lean4 language where you can formally prove math theorems. And then it became kind of crowdsourced, so people were cooperating all over the world, creating these libraries of proofs which other people can build on. But the book is about how all this came to be. And this one guy at Microsoft who wanted to do formal proving of software they really didn't care about the math until the math people kind of hijacked those efforts.

Bryan Cantrill:

This looks amazing. It's pretty

Tom Lyon:

interesting to read. You don't really have to know anything about math to read it.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. This looks great because this has become incredibly important because this is the way that all these things have improved now. I I don't if you follow-up to the...

Ian Grunnert:

Do you

Bryan Cantrill:

know anything about... I I feel I know very little about lean, but I see it all the time. I'm... This is absolutely in the queue. I'm beneath the Everything Store, of course.

Adam Leventhal:

And did you see, did you see, the first pull quote from Kevin Roose, about about this book? So it's got to be good.

Bryan Cantrill:

The most interesting book I've ever read about math. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Adam Leventhal:

It's like...

Bryan Cantrill:

Am I gonna explain it? Which I can't. Is that... Can I take the words out of your mouth?

Adam Leventhal:

Pretty much. It's like, Kevin, are you sure you wanna go with that? It's the most interesting book I've ever read about math. That's I asked you for a nice review. It's like, take...

Adam Leventhal:

Look. Take it or leave it. K. That's the pull quote. Okay.

Adam Leventhal:

I

Tom Lyon:

first learned about this lean stuff from no... None other than John Gage, the old son.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, interesting.

Tom Lyon:

So he's still on top of all this stuff. It's amazing.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That's wild. Really interesting. And I I mean, I assume this this this... I mean, this has to be a relatively current book.

Tom Lyon:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, I think last year.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah, that's great. Well, is a great recommendation, Tom, because I feel like we are kind of now at the point where we need to start, we can kind of expect some longer form books about the bonkers time that we're in. I feel like there's been a little bit of a dearth of that. So, this one's definitely on the queue. Oh, how do you...

Bryan Cantrill:

Adam, how do you feel about Kevin Roose's own book? Have you seen... I

Tom Lyon:

have not watched... Have not seen that.

Bryan Cantrill:

So he has got... I don't think it's out yet. This is the AGI Chronicles. It is about the development. And I like...

Bryan Cantrill:

I think it could be... I guess we'll we'll know, like, the... In terms of the poll quote, if that was an insult or not by seeing if we if we get some return fire here for the for the AGI Chronicles. But the the... I mean, it looks...

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, I I don't know. Looks pretty interesting in terms of like the...

Tom Lyon:

It looks like it just

Adam Leventhal:

came Yeah. Did you see the prologue that is going around on Blue Sky?

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, for... To the AGI Chronicles. I have not.

Adam Leventhal:

It it has this section. I I'd stayed up too late the previous night in the AI themed party in the mission where tech workers affiliated with the movement known as effective accelerationism lounged on beanbags in an art loft snorting ketamine while debating the singularity.

Bryan Cantrill:

There's a lot there.

Ian Grunnert:

It's going

Adam Leventhal:

to be that kind

Ian Grunnert:

of book.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's gonna be that kind of book. It's gonna be a ketamine snorting debating the singularity kind of book. Interesting. Well, I retain my optimism.

Tom Lyon:

That way- Yeah, I gotta run.

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. Anyone else? Any others, Tom?

Ian Grunnert:

I'll drop a couple

Tom Lyon:

of things in the chat, but I gotta run now. Thanks.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, sounds great. Thank you so much, Tom. That is great. Great recommendations, Tom, as always. Do we...

Bryan Cantrill:

There we go. I was hoping that Ian would join us. You point Ian up? Yep. Great.

Bryan Cantrill:

Ian, we got the chance to meet in person. I'm a long time listener of the pod. Ian and I met last week in New York, which is Yeah,

Ian Grunnert:

it was cool to meet in person. The talk should be up on YouTube at some point for listeners who want to check it out. The Ross NYC talk that Bryan gave last week. I was in the audience, so it was great to be able to meet Bryan in person.

Bryan Cantrill:

We can both vouch for one another's existence. We are not both LLM hallucinations or maybe we both actually are. Not not one of us is. Anyway, Ian, what do you... You have had over the years, and I think we are...

Bryan Cantrill:

We talked about this last week, but I have read several of your recommendations over the years. Cyberville was the book that you and I are both trying to recall, by the way.

Ian Grunnert:

Yeah. I I remembered about five to ten minutes after we talked. Right. There we go.

Bryan Cantrill:

But I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed, the the the book on Blockbuster. There've been a bunch of good ones. So, yeah, what do you have?

Ian Grunnert:

So I read, The Iridium Story by John Bloom, which I think another listener recommended last year.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's right.

Ian Grunnert:

Yeah. I found it on the hacker news thread about a redeem getting acquired by Rocket Lab this year. I think the book is about like maybe 10 to 20% too long. Like I think it could have been a little bit tighter, but I think some portion of that is just like them navigating the bureaucracy feels very repetitive, because it is repetitive in that they seem to keep going around in circles and have the same sort of discussions again and again. But it also has this embedded history of Motorola.

Ian Grunnert:

I kind of wish and probably want to go find a book about Motorola after after reading this book.

Bryan Cantrill:

That's a very good point. That it's got a... The the embedded history of Motorola. And I I also love, Ian, that the... And I think this is kind of interesting for the current time we live in.

Bryan Cantrill:

They spend a bunch of time... So Adam, part of the problem is that the Iridium... They kind of have like a gun to Iridium's head. Iridium is a satellite, amazing satellite network. And like the engineering of that is just incredible.

Bryan Cantrill:

And the satellite network, if it's not maintained, it will burn up. And there's this kind of question of like, do we let it burn up? What does it mean to burn up? But so then they've kind of constantly got the gun to the head of like, no, no, you need to give us another round of funding or we're going to let this whole thing burn up. But the thing, I would love to get your take on it because the one thing that I thought was really interesting was just before they even could get this thing airborne at all, they had to deal with this insurance issue of what the damage would be if this thing came down to earth.

Bryan Cantrill:

And now that feels like almost quaint, but it's an issue that they are really going back and forth on because they want to have the government as a backstop. And the government is like very concerned about insuring it because they're very concerned that this thing is going to cause like a huge amount of damage. But I thought that that that... So I liked that whole aspect of insurance. I thought that was really fascinating.

Bryan Cantrill:

But maybe is that the 20% you're referring to? It actually occurs to me, you're like, yeah, that's the kind of stuff that could have been tightened, but I thought that was really good.

Ian Grunnert:

I think it was more the, like, the last, like, week or two where it's like, oh, Motorola are threatening to deorbit again. You know? Like, okay. Like, sure. They'll continue to threaten.

Ian Grunnert:

Like, does anyone believe that they are going to follow through at this point? Like, why? Like, I don't know. I feel like...

Bryan Cantrill:

I do agree that. Like, they're they......

Ian Grunnert:

Frustrated with Motorola, and I think that I am included in that.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yes. I agree with that. You're just like... You do get super frustrated like, okay. Yet again, we're gonna threaten the deorbit.

Bryan Cantrill:

You're like, oh god. Just deorbit it already. But no. Don't do that. Actually, wait a minute.

Bryan Cantrill:

Don't. No. No. I I totally agree with you. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

That was great. I I enjoyed it too, Ian.

Ian Grunnert:

Yeah. I've got a couple of others. I read King Pong this year, a book about Atari and and the Pong arcade cabinet, Which I enjoyed but again I left thinking oh I kind of want just like a book about Atari, like this is a kind of subset of what Atari did And it was a fascinating subset, but I felt like I could have done with like just a bigger picture on Atari.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. Interesting. I'm looking though at at the MIT Press related books on King King Pong and they've got at the end of the rainbow, identity crisis of the Atari eight bit computer. This has been... It's an LLM making this just for me right now.

Bryan Cantrill:

This actually Identity crisis? Exactly. Identity crisis, eight bit computer, Atari, you say. Okay. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Bye. Interesting. So, okay. So a little bit... Have you read Racing the Beam, Ian?

Bryan Cantrill:

Adam, have you read Racing the Beam? No. Really interesting book about the Atari video computer system, but also not exactly a history of Atari, history of kind of like one aspect of Atari, but very technical. It was good.

Ian Grunnert:

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I should look that one up. Yeah, I also read Tom Wolfe's The Write Stuff.

Bryan Cantrill:

Oh, so good. You like Yeah,

Ian Grunnert:

I mean, the writing is incredible and I feel

Bryan Cantrill:

like The writing is incredible.

Ian Grunnert:

I feel like I did not understand, like, the cultural cache that astronauts had fully until I read that book. And then I was like, oh, I mean, I was not alive when this was happening, of course. So it was like, oh, they get ticket tape parades and like a good chunk of New York City shows up for the astronaut. And you're like, okay, they were like legitimate celebrities. Whereas I I just don't think they hold that same cachet today.

Bryan Cantrill:

They are such studs. Have you read the right stuff, Adam? No. Oh, god. It is really well written.

Bryan Cantrill:

And you're like, these guys are such studs. And like, and and like the studliest of the studs is Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong is like the best of the best of the best of the best. And you just come with it like, my god. They were, I mean, it's extraordinary.

Bryan Cantrill:

I mean, it's hard to know because you are becoming... It's very well written. So you are you are definitely... I've just been told by one of our listeners that I sound like like our president. How do I...

Bryan Cantrill:

How is that?

Adam Leventhal:

I was I was wondering if you can start talking about his ass.

Bryan Cantrill:

Talk about his ass? Yeah. Do you go to Armstrong's ass? No. This is...

Bryan Cantrill:

Okay. You know what? I... Moving right along. Right stuff.

Bryan Cantrill:

I think people should read it. I'm sorry. I apparently have said too much. Sure Neil Armstrong has a fine ass. I'm sure.

Bryan Cantrill:

I probably would praise it. And that... You know what? I'm I'm fine with that.

Adam Leventhal:

Comfortable with that. Yeah.

Bryan Cantrill:

Ian, get me out of here. Get me out of

Tom Lyon:

here with

Bryan Cantrill:

literally anything. Recommend a book that you don't even like.

Ian Grunnert:

Last one I have to recommend is The Master Switch by Tim Wu, which is kind of covering a number of different sort of like information technology revolutions and how they kind of contribute to monopolisation and how the power structures around who owns it and who controls it, I found it quite good, partially from a historical standpoint, but also just thinking forward of like, oh okay, so who owns and controls the internet over time? Or in the AI race, what are the dynamics that could be at play there for the winners in the field. I thought it was a pretty good book.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yeah. That is rich. And and this is written in 2010, which is interesting. It's like, what does Tim Wu think about where we are now? If that was the master switch, that...

Bryan Cantrill:

It'd

Adam Leventhal:

that...

Bryan Cantrill:

This looks really good. And the... So you read it this year, Ian?

Ian Grunnert:

Yeah. I think it was this year. Looking at my Kindle history, I think it must have been this year. Yeah. Because I did not recommend it last year.

Ian Grunnert:

So that There you makes sense.

Bryan Cantrill:

Well, good. You got me out of there. We... Thank you very much.

Adam Leventhal:

Tim Wu... I I owe Tim Wu

Bryan Cantrill:

a debt of gratitude because you you saved me from from further embarrassment as I was giving what I felt was totally reasonable praise for Neil Armstrong, but... Good stuff. All right. Well, so Adam, got a lot of good books to read for next year. I...

Bryan Cantrill:

But but one, of course, stands above and beyond the others. That would be The Everything Store. So I just wanna... I really wanna reemphasize.

Adam Leventhal:

Look, I understand. It's it's a big book. It's at the bottom of a pile. I understand how it goes.

Bryan Cantrill:

It's a big book and it's like it's against the Jenga thing. Like, it's a big book

Adam Leventhal:

that can hold many small books on top

Bryan Cantrill:

of it, which I mean, that's I mean, it's kind of being cursed by its size right now. Yeah. I'm not not because I'm afraid of it. So but a lot of good stuff to read.

Adam Leventhal:

And I'd encourage folks to add their own recommendations in chat now. Or if you're reading this... Listening to this on a podcast to drop it in the notes and we'll add that to the notes. Include those recommendations there. So

Bryan Cantrill:

I definitely do. If you weren't heard live. Yeah. And also, you know, I love that it was great to see so many fans of the podcast, especially last week in New York at this Ross meetup, Adam. And a couple of folks coming up to me talking about Books in the Box.

Bryan Cantrill:

And one of them said that they absolutely loved... Dealers of Lightning was one of the ones that... Oh, cool.... The podcast. And then a bunch of others, of course, recommending Soul of New Machine and others.

Bryan Cantrill:

So it's really inspiring to us to know that when we're kind of sharing these recommendations, we love reading your recommendations. And it's really great to be able to read the recommendations of others and then to avoid other books unless you course you want that to be your entree to lead poisoning, in which case, go ahead. Exactly. Tetraethanol lead, you should definitely read Yudkowsky. All right, well, is great stuff.

Bryan Cantrill:

Many books in the box, a couple in the bonfire, but good stuff. Thank you everyone. And back to your World Series game already in progress. So see you next year during the World Series for for will be Books in the Box seven.

Adam Leventhal:

And everyone go vote.

Bryan Cantrill:

Yes. Absolutely. Please do. Thanks, everyone.