3 Books With Neil Pasricha

Do you ever feel book guilt?   Do you ever feel book shame?   Do you ever feel bad when you quit a book?   Do you ever feel like the books you read aren’t ‘hard’ enough?   These are common feelings that I know I’ve had. I say we need to get rid of all the book shame and book guilt we learn as we grow up because there really is no right or wrong way to read. We need to escape the book exhaustion that can come with endless Shakespeare, mandatory classics, and piles of textbooks.   We need to tell kids that they can read whatever they want to read.   Picture books! Comic books! Young Adult!   Whatever.   Just follow your joy and keep the books coming.   I partly started 3 Books as a way to keep stoking the flames for that pure love of reading books.   For most of my adult life, I lost my love of reading. Loved books as a child! And yet somehow by my late 20s I had almost completely stopped reading books. What was it? I’m not sure if it was too many dry textbooks, the endless addiction of social media feed, or th

Happy Sturgeon Moon, everybody! And happy Blue Moon, too! Jane McGonigal joins us on Chapter 85 of 3 Books to help us celebrate.   Let’s start off with a question.   What would you do if you jumped out of a desk chair and slammed your head directly into an open cupboard door which gave you a massive concussion that left you bedridden for months? Oh, and you were told “No reading, no writing, no video games, no work, no email, no running, no alcohol, and no caffeine.”   Well, most of us would probably just lie there.   I mean, what else could you do?   Well, if you’re Jane McGonigal that’s not what you do. No! If you’re Jane McGonigal, what you do is design a game, in your concussion-riddled state, to help you get better. You create an avatar. You give yourself goals. You select projects. And you slowly help yourself heal! You call the game Jane the Concussion Slayer, after your favorite TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and then you release it out into the world.   Today that game has helped over a million pe

Do you have a therapist?   Do you meet up with someone on a regular basis to open up, talk about yourself, and get into the weeds of your emotions? Maybe the ones you can articulate, the ones you can’t articulate, the ones you’re angry about having, the ones you’re confused about having.   I started seeing a therapist about 10 years ago.   After the loss of my marriage and my best friend, it was suggested by my parents that I would benefit from seeing a therapist.   I’m embarrassed to admit I said no. “I don’t need a therapist! I don’t have problems! That’s for people with problems! That’s not me!”   Maybe it was the years, decades, generations of stigma and taboos around that word? Therapy. Growing up I never heard about anyone going to therapy except in the context of some desperate, last second attempt to salvage something like a failing marriage at the eleventh hour.   Maybe that’s why I’m talking about it today! I’m very lucky to have a therapist. And proud of it too, I’d say. My wife Leslie is, too. We

“Our technologies, markets and cultural institutions, once forces for human connection and expression, now isolate and repress us. It is time to remake society together, not as individual players, but as the team we actually are: Team Human.”   That little paragraph is printed right on the cover of the latest book by Douglas Rushkoff.   Do you know Douglas Rushkoff?   He’s a vivid, big-thinking author behind books like Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, Screenagers, Playing the Future, Media Virus, and many others.   Seth Godin calls him acerbic. I’ll call him provocative. Douglas is not afraid of anything! His writing is confident and he’s got the research and logic ready behind every point.   No wonder he’s been named one of the world’s most influential thought leaders. Douglas hosts the popular Team Human podcast, writes for The Guardian, and is the documentarian behind Generation Like and Merchants of Cool. He’s also responsible for coining many popular phrases incl

What was your first Tarantino experience?   I was thirteen years old in an unfinished basement watching Reservoir Dogs on VHS and can still remember how shook my friends and I were when we saw it.   Was that your first Tarantino experience? Or was it Pulp Fiction? Jackie Brown? Kill Bill? Inglourious Basterds? Django Unchained? The Hateful Eight? Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?   Well, the Tarantino Experience continues with his brand new book Once Upon A Time In Hollywood which is the propulsive, addictive, roller-coastering movie novelization of his award-winning film. I absolutely loved it.   Today we’re going to talk about: Quentin Tarantino’s favorite writer, how we thicken our skin in a thin-skinned world, how we can live confidently in a clickbait world, how one goes about writing a movie novelization, what an unlikely spinoff to Inglourious Basterds might look like, why we should avoid self censorship, what are Quentin’s thoughts on meme Quentin Quarantino, his three most formative books, and much, muc

I discovered Dave Eggers in the late 90s when the Internet was all belts and pinions and the only two comedy websites that I remember reading were The Onion and McSweeney’s. The Onion’s site was the notorious outcropping of a campus comedy newspaper from Wisconsin and McSweeney’s was founded by a publishing dynamo Whiz Kid named Dave Eggers who’d worked at places like Wired and Might Magazine, which he’d cofounded out in San Francisco. In 2000 Dave’s ‘anti-memoir’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius came out and, no big deal, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. I loved the book and the seemingly endless creative fireworks Dave was capable of producing. What happened in the twenty years since? Well today Dave Eggers is one of the most celebrated writers in the world — he’s written bestsellers like The Circle, A Hologram For The King, Zeitoun and won or been nominated for endless awards including the TED Prize, The Salon Book Award, Time’s 100 Most Influential People, The National Book Critics Circ

3 Books is published on the lunar calendar. I share one new chapter of the show on the exact minute of every single full moon and every single new moon all the way up to September 1, 2031 at 5:52am. But today … I don’t have a chapter for you. I have a bookmark. On every single equinox and every single solstice I will drop a little extra of some kind … a seasonal intermezzo if you will. The first bookmark was with Nora McInerny, host of Terrible, Thanks for Asking, back on the March equinox. And now it’s the June solstice and I’m sharing my SXSW 2019 speech “Building trust in distrustful times” Why am I sharing this speech? Well you know what’s one thing I have missed during the pandemic? Giant rooms full of throngs of people. Cheering together, laughing together, learning together. There is an electric energy buzz that cannot be replicated virtually. So let’s head down to the Austin Convention Center to a ballroom with over 2500 people filling every chair and standing at the sides and at the back and talk abo

Are you ready for a brain workout? Are you ready for a mind expanding conversation with the incredible Dr. Kristin Neff? Kristin received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in moral development and followed it up with a post doc at the University of Denver studying self concept development and now she’s working as an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. During Kristin’s last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work, she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. Kristin is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct almost 20 years ago. She is the author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and the brand new book Fierc

“The Ys sounds like Js,” Yuyi Morales tells me when I ask for the correct way to pronounce her name. It’s embarrassing to ask but my detective work online resulted in a half dozen different options. Yuyi is a Mexican-American children’s book author and illustrator. She was born in Mexico and raised amongst giant grandmothers, mossy house walls, and rampaging feral gardens, fostering a strong bond with magical stories that ran in her family as a child. Today she is known for her incredible children’s books which combine powerful spare language and sumptuous complex imagery. She has written books like, Dreamers, Niño Wrestles the World, Just a Minute, Viva Frida, Little Night, Just In Case and her brand new book coming out in September called, Bright Star (I suggest you pre-order it!). It tells the story of a fawn making her way through a border landscape, teeming with flora and fauna native to the region. A gentle empowering voice encourages her to face her fears when she comes across an obstacle in the

I was a tiny and skinny kid with thick glasses at my public school in the suburbs of Toronto in the early 80s. I was pretty lonely and definitely hadn’t found my way. One day my librarian Ms. Ferrell handed me a book called Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. The book single-handedly turned me into a reader. I had never read a book that was funny, absurd, choppy that just kept me flipping, flipping, flipping. I loved the book. I fell into the book. I read it again and again and again and still have multiple copies on my bookshelf today. (A small count towards the nine million copies sold.) In 2010 when The Book of Awesome came out I wrote in the Acknowledgements: “To Louis Sachar, for writing Sideways Stories from Wayside School and teaching a nerdy kid to to fall in love with reading.” Louis Sacher was born in East Meadow, New York in 1954 and moved to California when he was 9. He liked school but was not much of a reader until he fell into the works of J.D.Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut. He st

Happy Pink Moon, everybody! Way back in 2017, I came across a feature article in The New York Times Magazine called “A Whimsical Wordsmith Charts a Course Beyond Twitter.” The article was about MIT PhD student Jonny Sun’s online personality — as a sentimental alien — attracting a huge following online.   I was like “Okay, this is about the latest viral Instagram influencer and their particular brand of attention seeking behavior.” But as I read the piece, and went deeper into the bio of Jonny Sun, I found myself fascinated. Jonny Sun is a PhD student at MIT looking to understand, in more objective ways, how social media fosters community. His research focuses on how social media content influences the broader world. How meaning is made. How it spreads. How it changes news and culture. As one comedian put it, “He’s like Jane Goodall and we’re the apes.” I found myself falling deeper and deeper into the Jonny Sun rabbit hole. There’s a lot there! Jonny is an architect, designer, engineer, artist, playwright, a

Do you suffer from anxiety disorder? Depression? Intrusive thoughts? Obsessive compulsive disorder? Voluntary hair pulling? Avoidant personality disorder? Any of the above? Well, Jenny Lawson suffers from all of the above. Tuberculosis too, according to her wonderful new book. It’s an overwhelming way to live and only partly cured by being a global community leader for mental health through her wonderful blog (TheBloggess.com), her millions of followers, and her indie bookshop Nowhere Bookshop down in San Antonio, Texas. Does Jenny Lawson do podcasts? Interviews? No, not really. She tells us at the beginning of the chat that she loves 3 Books so much that she wanted to come — lucky us, as 3 Bookers have been asking for this interview for years! — and she made herself cozy by calling me up from under her desk, in cozy clothes, post-beta-blockers, and with Hunter S. Tomcat providing animal therapy throughout. Jenny is funny, crass, smart, and openhearted. She’s struck a deep chord with her books Let’s Pret

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter discusses the 3 most formative books of one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Brené Brown, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Angie Thomas, Cheryl Strayed, Rich Roll, Soyoung the Variety Store Owner, Derek the Hype Man, Kevin the Bookseller, Vishwas the Uber Driver, Roxane Gay, David Mitchell, Vivek Murthy, Mark Manson, Seth Godin, and Judy Blume. 3 Books is published on the lunar calendar with each of the 333 chapters dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and every single full moon all the way up to 5:21 am on September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and is 100% non-profit with no ads, no sponsors, no commercials, and no interruptions. 3 Books has 3 clubs including the End of the Podcast Club, the Cover to Cover Club, and the Secret Club, which operates entirely through the mail and is only accessi

I love you, 3 Bookers. The deepening connection and trust in this community constantly blows me away. It picks me up when I’m down, it’s a barrel of nerdy laughs, it helps me scratch a lot of itches in my brain. And it’s been truly great friendship through the pandemic. I mean, End of the Podcast Club, Cover to Cover Club, and Secret Club? Where you have to find a hidden password? And then send cash in the mail to a secret address? I didn’t think anyone would join these ridiculous things! You leave so many voicemails at 1-833-READ-A-LOT, you mail letters we read on the show, and you leave the hundreds of reviews that I try really, really hard not to care about and yet still shamefully, biologically kind of do. We get the joyful pleasure of going on an adventure and of braiding together our invisible reading lives. I have so many ideas for deepening this connection over the years and I want to introduce one today. For the last ten years of 3 Books, I plan to release a special Bookmark on the exact minute o

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter discusses the 3 most formative books of one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Brené Brown, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Angie Thomas, Cheryl Strayed, Rich Roll, Soyoung the Variety Store Owner, Derek the Hype Man, Kevin the Bookseller, Vishwas the Uber Driver, Roxane Gay, David Mitchell, Vivek Murthy, Mark Manson, Seth Godin, and Judy Blume. 3 Books is published on the lunar calendar with each of the 333 chapters dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and every single full moon all the way up to 5:21 am on September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and is 100% non-profit with no ads, no sponsors, no commercials, and no interruptions. 3 Books has 3 clubs including the End of the Podcast Club, the Cover to Cover Club, and the Secret Club, which operates entirely through the mail and is only accessi

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter discusses the 3 most formative books of one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Brené Brown, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Angie Thomas, Cheryl Strayed, Rich Roll, Soyoung the Variety Store Owner, Derek the Hype Man, Kevin the Bookseller, Vishwas the Uber Driver, Roxane Gay, David Mitchell, Vivek Murthy, Mark Manson, Seth Godin, and Judy Blume. 3 Books is published on the lunar calendar with each of the 333 chapters dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and every single full moon all the way up to 5:21 am on September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and is 100% non-profit with no ads, no sponsors, no commercials, and no interruptions. 3 Books has 3 clubs including the End of the Podcast Club, the Cover to Cover Club, and the Secret Club, which operates entirely through the mail and is only accessi

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter discusses the 3 most formative books of one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Brené Brown, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Angie Thomas, Cheryl Strayed, Rich Roll, Soyoung the Variety Store Owner, Derek the Hype Man, Kevin the Bookseller, Vishwas the Uber Driver, Roxane Gay, David Mitchell, Vivek Murthy, Mark Manson, Seth Godin, and Judy Blume. 3 Books is published on the lunar calendar with each of the 333 chapters dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and every single full moon all the way up to 5:21 am on September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and is 100% non-profit with no ads, no sponsors, no commercials, and no interruptions. 3 Books has 3 clubs including the End of the Podcast Club, the Cover to Cover Club, and the Secret Club, which operates entirely through the mail and is only accessi

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter is hosted live and in-person at the guest's preferred location by Neil Pasricha, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awesome, The Happiness Equation, Two-Minute Mornings, etc. Each chapter of 3 Books uncovers and discusses the three most formative books from one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Judy Blume, David Sedaris, Chris Anderson of TED, the founder of the world's largest feminist magazine, the world's greatest Uber driver, Pete Holmes, Angie Thomas, and Malcolm Gladwell. Each of the 333 chapters is dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and full moon until September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and 100% ad-free, commercial-free, sponsor-free, and interruption-free. For more info check out: https://www.3books.co Chapter Description: So I pull into the gas station to fill up my van and a c

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter is hosted live and in-person at the guest's preferred location by Neil Pasricha, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awesome, The Happiness Equation, Two-Minute Mornings, etc. Each chapter of 3 Books uncovers and discusses the three most formative books from one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Judy Blume, David Sedaris, Chris Anderson of TED, the founder of the world's largest feminist magazine, the world's greatest Uber driver, Pete Holmes, Angie Thomas, and Malcolm Gladwell. Each of the 333 chapters is dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and full moon until September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and 100% ad-free, commercial-free, sponsor-free, and interruption-free. For more info check out: https://www.3books.co Chapter Description: Leslie and I had just started dating when she sent me a

3 Books is a completely insane and totally epic 15-year-long quest to uncover the 1000 most formative books in the world. Each chapter is hosted live and in-person at the guest's preferred location by Neil Pasricha, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awesome, The Happiness Equation, Two-Minute Mornings, etc. Each chapter of 3 Books uncovers and discusses the three most formative books from one of the world's most inspiring people. Sample guests include: Judy Blume, David Sedaris, Chris Anderson of TED, the founder of the world's largest feminist magazine, the world's greatest Uber driver, Pete Holmes, Angie Thomas, and Malcolm Gladwell. Each of the 333 chapters is dropped on the exact minute of every single new moon and full moon until September 1, 2031. 3 Books is an Apple "Best Of" award-winning show and 100% ad-free, commercial-free, sponsor-free, and interruption-free. For more info check out: https://www.3books.co Chapter Description: I am so delighted to close out 2020 with the magical wis