3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Born in 1934, the 18th of 19 children in the small blue-collar town of Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, Jean Chrétien has risen to become the "grandfather of Canada" and a definitive force in global politics for over 50 years.   Chrétien was one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers in Canadian history and led three successive majority terms as leader of the Liberal Party from 1993 to 2003.   He famously said no to joining the US in the Iraq War (solidifying Canada’s independence on foreign policy), signed the Kyoto Protocol (committing Canada to its first-ever international environmental agreement), established the Oceans Act (helping Canada become the first country to prioritize ocean health), creating the Clarity Act (to establish terms for secession movements after leading the 'No' side to victory in the 1995 Quebec Referendum), and leading Operation Yellow Ribbon which helped 40,000 Americans in the air and traveling through Canada on September 11, 2001 and beyond.   Let's put on a suit and tie and fly up to O

Long before I oriented my life around reading, I would get the majority of my (4-5!) books per year read during the summer. But summer reads get a bad rap for being too silly, too saucy, too simple. So this summer join me in bridging the gap to find great beachy reads. We want books that have a speedy pace *and* expand our minds! We want books that help us escape our everyday lives *and* teach us something new. A mesmerizing coming-of-age novel! A slim tear-jerky memoir! A crucial self-help book! An evocative life story from the deep south. And, of course, the Tom Wolfe novel I think everybody should start with… I made this video and podcast for you: Please enjoy my 5 summer beach books to stretch your mind like taffy while you bake in the sun… Let's find your next read now...

BIG NEWS! I just finished writing CANADA IS AWESOME: A Little Book About A Big Country. This podcast is me reading the whole book! The book is about all the weird, wonderful, beautiful things that make Canada ... Canada. Did you ever notice Canadians speak in the collective? “What do you think of the weather we’re having?” “Shall we grab a Tims before the meeting?” “Think we have a shot at the playoffs?” We, we, we. We use the word we so much. Why do we feel like such a collective? I don’t think it’s complicated. I think it’s because we are one. We all toss around half of everything we make into a big glass jar and use it to pay for everyone’s health care, education, and services. Sure, the system’s never perfect, but if you shatter your ankle in an icy Canadian Tire parking lot, need a dozen years of free school for five kids in Kamloops, or want to drive on freshly snowplowed roads from Comox to Cornwall to Cape Spear, well ... we got you. We got you. We got everyone. So today I'm releasing

It started with a modern plea for help: "Can I charge my dead phone in your bookstore?" I was in Del Mar, California, walking up the coast of the Pacific Ocean after birding all morning in ​Torrey Pines​. I was tracking my birds on ​eBird​—the ​Peregrine Falcons​, ​Anna's Hummingbirds​, and ​California Scrub-Jays​—and, of course, completely drained my phone's battery. When I get to Del Mar I spy this hobbit-hole looking bookstore called ​Camino Books: For The Road Ahead​ and when I walk in I am suddenly thrust into a gorgeous Biblio Paradise. Camino Books is one of the most spectacular bookstores I've ever seen! I fall into the handwritten Staff Picks walls, nookish children's section, incredible curation, giant hand-drawn posters from Dave Eggers, and the Wonka-like atmosphere that creates a true feast for the eyes and mind! But yeah ... my phone's dead. So I walk to the back counter and ask the gentleman unpacking boxes if I could plug it in back there. When I tell him I'm Canadian he gives me a quir

Loneliness rates have doubled since the 1980s and Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General, says loneliness will be the next major epidemic. So if loneliness is being alone and sad … then what’s being alone and happy? Solitude. A few years ago, I picked up an incredible book called '​Solitude​' by Michael Harris, bestselling author and winner of the Governor General's Award for his writing. It completely blew me away. Why? Because in our era of endless machine-gun blasts at our brains, I feel strongly that the ability to be alone, and to be alone well, is a muscle that is quickly atrophying. Michael shares why we need to develop the strength and capacity to live and be by ourselves and how exactly we go about cultivating a rich interior life. Michael has gone on to tackle our culture of consumerism in his 2021 book '​All We Want: Building the Life We Cannot Buy​,' and I think after this conversation you’ll agree this true “strength of mind” is a crucial aspect of living an intentional life as we face the t

Ginny Yurich (​@1000hoursoutside​) drove 5 hours up the road from Michigan to Toronto to hang out with Leslie and me. We went for a walk outside (of course!) and recorded this podcast—our second outdoors podcast in a row after ​Nickisha The Dog Walker​! Why outside? I'm glad you asked! Ginny Yurich is the homeschooling mother of 5 (!) who has spirited a movement called ​1000 Hours Outside​. I like 1000 as you know! ​1000 Awesome Things​ was my first blog, ​1000 formative books​ is ... this entire podcast. So when 3 Bookers globally kept telling me to interview Ginny I looked her up and saw she was a fan of 1000 and I knew ... this was going to be good. And it was even better than I thought! Grab some headphones! Put on some shoes! Let's mutually peel ourselves off screens and scrolling and let's step into the sun, into the wind, into the air and talk about parenting pressures, raising a wild child, ​old dangerous playground equipment​, the benefits of spinning, why osteoporosis is a childhood disease, rais

Have you heard of a book called '​The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck​'? I’m guessing you have since it’s sold, uh, 16 million copies since it came out in 2016. There hadn't been a non-fiction book that big and disruptive in a long, long time… Mark’s meteoric success is the product of a giant mind which has mastered the art of taking the biggest, densest books on the planet and then simmering them down into simple, profanity-laced models and stories that hit you like a ton of bricks. The world is so loud! So busy. So full. Everything is screaming at us to buy this, buy that, do this, do that. You know what we need in this wild world? Guides! Clear voices. People who give us simple and practical advice that we can follow and put into place… Mark Manson is one of those guides for me and millions of others. I follow his popular ​YouTube channel​ and read his ​simple and punchy tweets​. In this classic 3 Books chapter, in Mark's cramped hotel room at The Drake Hotel in Toronto, we go deep on building trust

Let's go for a walk!   I've sometimes imagined 3 Books as a long walk with a friend. So today—let's take one! Nickisha moved to Toronto from Jamaica when she was 16 to reunite with her mom and after working as a travel agent she broke out on her own to run a successful business full of fresh air, exercise, community, and lots of love.   I sometimes see Nickisha with five, six, or seven dogs around her—giving them the highlight of their day! Tongues wagging. Skip in their step. Motoring around town clocking 100km on foot each week!   One of our traditions on 3 Books is doing podcasts outside from ​Chapter 27​ with Robin the Bartender on the open patio of Bar Raval in Toronto to ​Chapter 106​ with Alok Vaid-Menon in Central Park in New York City to ​Chapter 131​ with J. Drew Lanham while birdwatching in South Carolina...   Another tradition here is exploring stories from people who fill our lives but aren't often represented by our screen-based culture full of politicians and billionaires. We vote with our atte

No one does it like Angie. Racial tensions, police shootings, citizen uprisings. Does this sound like the setting of a YA novel? How about three of them? Her debut '​The Hate U Give,​' her sophomore release '​On The Come Up​,' and her third '​Concrete Rose​' were all on The New York Times bestseller list, and her fantasy middle school-level book '​Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy​' was *also* an instant New York Times bestseller! In this classic chapter of 3 Books, we sat down together at the busiest hotel in downtown Toronto on the tail end of Angie’s 15-city book tour to discuss how we find the truth for ourselves, when do we bring up harsh realities to kids, and what place media and religion have in society today. We dive deep into the heightened racial and political tensions today and we search for a way out and, as always, we get to learn Angie Thomas’s three most formative books. Let's flip the page back to Chapter 26 now...

Is porn good sex education? Why does body autonomy matter for kids? Does talking about sex kill the mood? Emily Nagoski has the answers! Emily is a sex educator and activist whose mission is to teach us how to live with confidence and joy inside our bodies. She does this as the New York Times bestselling author of 'Come As You Are,' 'Burnout,' and 'Come Together,' as well as through her 3 popular TED Talks including—with over 3 million views—"How couples can sustain a strong sexual connection for a lifetime." Emily began working as a sex educator 30 years ago at the University of Delaware. She has a Master's in Counseling Psychology and she worked at the famous Kinsey Institute. She has taught graduate and undergraduate classes in human sexuality, relationships, communication, stress management, and sex education. She was Director of Wellness Education at Smith College for eight years before starting to write full time. In this deep-dive chapter we talk about neurodiversity versus neurodivergence, mainta

What do you know about James Frey? Or what do you think you know about James Frey? I’m guessing it’s not nothing. Everyone has an opinion! When I first spotted '​A Million Little Pieces​' on my wife’s bookshelf when we were moving in together I was like “Oh? Really? That book? The Oprah guy?” And she was like “Have you read it?” And I was like “No, no idea what it’s even about. Just that it’s not real or whatever.” She looked at me with disappointed eyes. Understandably so! I hadn’t bothered to go below the surface. To read about it on my own. I had just soaked in some distant fumes off the story. “Read it,” she said, and pushed the book into my hands. That night I opened 'A Million Little Pieces' and was completely pulled into this pulsing, frenetic, endlessly climactic story of addiction, growth, and finding yourself. The book shook me. It was a masterpiece. I couldn’t believe it existed. I almost felt anger towards ​the Oprah saga​ because it headfaked me into thinking I knew what the book was abou

Don't use mouthwash.   Why?   It's not Lindy.   At least that's what Paul Skallas, a Chicago-born technology lawyer who goes by Lindyman online, says. I was fascinated to read a New York Times profile of him titled "The Lindy Way of Living," and knew I wanted to have him on 3 Books.   In the 2012 book 'Antifragile,' the statistician and scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined "the Lindy Effect." He wrote, "For the perishable, every additional day in life translates to a shorter additional life expectancy, kind of like me and you and the cheese and our fridge, or the milk and our fridge. But for the non-perishable, every additional day may imply a longer life expectancy." The Lindy Effect says that the longer something has been around, the longer it will stay around.   Paul took this heuristic and with his unique and perceptive insights along with his deep reading of ancient history came to apply it to a broad range of things, including health. He doesn't use mouthwash, a relatively new invention that kills good

We live in interesting times.    And they're getting interestinger!   I keep my eyes open for big thinkers to help guide and inform me as I keep trying to make sense of the world. My friend Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy) is one of those people:   Tim has a giant mind willing to engage with our fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. The big questions!   Tim's blog Wait Buy Why still scores millions of readers per month with big-name fans like Jonathan Haidt, Bari Weiss, Sam Harris, Bryan Johnson, and (yes) Elon Musk. Why? Because Tim has an incredible way of smallifying complex topics like artificial intelligence, time we have for loved ones, or why we haven't seen aliens into simple language.    More recently Tim has self-published an incredible book called 'What's Our Problem: A Self-Help Book For Societies' (which I review here!). He’s a teacher and a philosopher. His Richard Feynman-like distillation abilities are on display in his TED Talk on procrastination which has 75 million views!   Tim’s

​Nick Sweetman​ is one of Toronto's most prominent graffiti artists. Last February I was walking down Lansdowne Avenue in Toronto with my friend ​Michael Bungay Stanier​, who was our guest back in ​Chapter 48​, and as we strolled under a giant bridge I saw a giant ... well, it looked like a photo! But it wasn't a photo. It was a massive spray-painted image of a ​Hooded Merganser​, and at the very bottom corner was a signature that said "Nick Sweetman." Looks like a photo, right? Look at that eye! That bill! But I discovered there's this Toronto mural artist named Nick Sweetman and turns out I've seen the guy's stuff all over the place. He paints ​pollinators​, ​birds​, ​insects​, and ​animals​ of all kinds... He painted a ​whale shark​ I've ridden by on my bike for years without knowing it was him! Squint and you'll see the 'Sweetman' underneath its cavernous mouth. So I decided to reach out to Nick Sweetman and ask him about doing a unique partnership with me and 3 Books. He was game! We found a

Who else loves David Sedaris? I discovered him in 1997 when an old mentor/editor at Golden Words, my college humor papers, suggested I pick up his book 'Naked' to become a better writer myself. I found the essays sardonic, witty, uncannily observational, and laugh-out-loud funny. I couldn't believe how gently and elegantly he wrote about topics ranging from his obsessive compulsive tics to dropping out of school to (in the namesake essay) visiting a nudist colony. Like millions of people around the world I became obsessed with David Sedaris. I’ve read all of his books—'Me Talk Pretty One Day' (2000) being close to my heart and 'Calypso' (2018) being a recent fave. I even went to see him speak at Massey Hall in Toronto which is where I learned—first-hand!—that he waits hours and hours after every talk to happily chat and sign books from anybody willing to wait for him. (In my case my phone died about two hours before I had a chance to say hi. Years ago we had a sixty-second conversation about pie and he wrote

Happy Solstice!   As we do every December solstice it's time for our 7th Annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books.   3 Books is our 22-year-long conversation to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world.   This year we sat with ​academics at Oxford​ to ​bus drivers in St. Louis​, with ​Jonathan Franzen​ in Santa Cruz to ​Oliver Burkeman​ in the North York Moors, with the ​world's largest bookseller​ and ​Amazon union organizers​, with ​Oscar nominees​ to a ​guy who dresses up all day as as a duck​.   This year I've changed tack and made the "Best Of" highly concentrated—under 50 minutes long!—with little snippets from our diverse guests to provide reflection, provoke your thinking, and help to set intentions for 2025 and beyond.   Thank you for being a 3 Booker and spending time with this incredible community of book lovers spread across the world.   Let’s stop to reflect and then keep enjoying the ride....

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world with over a million employees in the U.S. alone. A monolith responsible for trillions of dollars of revenue through retail, entertainment, and infrastructure.   But Chris Smalls took it on anyway.   Chris had worked at Amazon for 5 years before he was fired in March 2020 after leading a walkout at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse to protest pandemic working conditions.   "We all got radicalized at some point in our lives," he told me. "My life changed forever when I got fired from Amazon."   Chris used that motivation to work with his former colleagues to try to unionize the warehouse. The first attempt failed, but in March 2022 the vote passed, and it became the first Amazon warehouse in the United States to be unionized.   As of today Amazon has not come to the bargaining table and is pursuing multiple legal actions to avoid recognizing the union, including challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.   What's going on?   I flew

Once you find purpose, and once you find style… what’s left? Beauty. What’s left is finding and putting out beauty into the world.   There are not many writers who have genuinely figured this out … but one of them is Mitch Albom. Mitch is the author of '​Tuesdays with Morrie​,' the bestselling memoir of all time, as well as '​The Five People You Meet in Heaven​' and his latest bestseller '​The Little Liar​' which came out in 2023 and debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. His books have sold over 40 million copies. Mitch just doesn’t turn off. He’s like a Tasmanian Devil. He’s hosting a ​radio show​, he’s on TV, he’s writing columns in the ​Detroit Free Press​, he’s a musician, he’s even running an ​orphanage in Haiti​. Mitch is full of energy and life and moves quickly and talks quickly … and so we talked about that. We go deep into why he moves through life so fast. We unpack his relationship with Morrie and talk about how I actually misinterpreted parts of the book. We talk about what

Are you ready for a writing masterclass from one of the best self-help writers in the world?   After graduating from Cambridge, Oliver Burkeman wrote the popular column “This Column Will Change Your Life” in ‘The Guardian’ for over 15 years sharing his real-world, real-time poetic exploration of the self-help universe. In 2021 he published 'Four Thousand Weeks,' a literary examination of how we live today. Mark Manson (our guest in Chapter 28) called it “a reality check on our culture’s crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life” and Adam Grant (our guest in Chapter 72) called it “the most important book ever written about time management."   Oliver's work is much more about how to live a good life in the limited time we have than the system and hacks you find in other popular productivity books, and he’s just released a wonderful follow-up called 'Meditations For Mortals.' This book offers the reader 28 short chapters meant to be read one a day for 28 days, a quiet evening ritua

Let's jump into the backseat of Vishwas Aggrawal's Uber and take a trip you won't forget. This is a story about setting your own standards in a world constantly hammering us into "human resources." This is a story about setting your own winning lines in a world that wants us to be widgets. This is a story about raising the bar for yourself and deeply valuing the human connection and love that has the potential to exist between every single one of us. Uber has no formal leaderboard, reward mechanism, or pay-for-performance tied to driver rating.   So why would Vish care? Why would he care about giving thousands of rides and pouring in day after day of high-end customer services to establish an incredible 4.99 rating? Why would he clean his mats between every trip, only eat raw vegetables in his car to avoid odors, and develop masterful scripts that help riders feel deeply valued in the middle of their busy days? Why bother? Join me in the backseat of Vish's Uber as we slowly circle closer and closer to