[S4E10] Season 4 Finale

Season four of business books and company was amazing. From author interviews to deep analysis, we read through some of the best business and career advice books on the market. Join us as we look back at the last year of business books and company. Welcome to business books and company. Every month we read great business books and explore how they can help us navigate our careers. Read along with us so you can become a stronger leader within your company or a more adept entrepreneur. Today we are looking back at season four. In season four, we read nine great business books and interviewed three best selling authors, and you were there with us. Thank you for being part of our growing audience. We are excited to discuss the best and yes, the worst parts of season four. And at the end of this episode, we'll tell you a little bit about what we're planning for season five. But before we get into our retrospective, let's introduce ourselves.

I'm David Short. I'm a product manager.

I'm Kevin Hudak, chief research officer at a real estate research and advisory firm based in Washington, DC.

And I'm David Kopeck. I'm associate professor of computer science at a teaching college. Okay, so there only were nine episodes in season four, but they were action packed episodes. And I want to just quickly recap for the audience the nine books that we read. So you know what the palette is that we're choosing from as we discuss things today. So we kicked off the season with how to win friends and influence people, a classic self help book. Then we went into the lean startup, a book about early stage startups and how you really manage them in a lean way. Then we got into how the Internet happened. We had author Brian McAuliffe on and he told us about the whole history of the Internet and the business side of the Internet in particular. Then we did the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs with author Carmine Gallo. And it was so interesting to get those tips. Theyve helped me in my day to day presentations. Then we read a blockbuster book, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Got a lot of comments from our listeners about that one. And we got into then the real estate market with am I being too subtle? Then we got into the history of Trader Joe, becoming Trader Joe with Patty Civilieri, came on the author. That was really interesting. And we had reminiscences of a stock operator. And we had friend of the show Brad Mills on to discuss that classic book about stock trading. And we ended the season with atomic habits, one of the best selling self help books of all time. Yet it only came out six years ago. So quite a wide variety of books that we covered this season and this episode is really a chance for us to look back and really think about how those books have added to our careers, what we liked, what we didn't like. And we're going to tell you, yeah, the ones that we really liked, the ones we didn't like, maybe the ones you should even skip. I'd like to start actually, David, with you. It's hard to believe it, but you and I have been doing this show for half a decade. It's been awesome doing it with you, by the way. It's really been an honor and I know we've grown as people at the same time that our audience has been growing with us. I'm wondering how you felt looking back at season four compared to the prior seasons of business books and company.

Well, I got married during the season, so, yeah, a lot of milestones, but it was really a, a great season. I really enjoyed it. I liked having the authors on again. I'm glad we added that. I think it was last season was the first time we did that, but I'm glad we continued it. Really enjoyed having Brad on. We'd done that once before as well. But I think continuing to have friends on that really know and enjoy a book and can add some insight I think is really fun for me and I hope for the audience as well. But yeah, really, really happy with the season overall. I feel like we read a bunch of great books. I feel like it got me to read more than I would have because work has been a little bit crazy and so having a reason to sit down and read is always good for me as well. Its another reason I love doing this with you.

Preston and Kevin, this was your second season together with us and it feels like youve been here from the beginning. The audience loves you so much and you bring such energy and insights to the show and David and I have loved working with you. So what was season like for you compared to the first season that we were together?

Well, just following on one thing that short mentioned and just as a tribute to him, I wanted, and since the season finales are always where we go a little bit in terms of the inside baseball, I always appreciate how short helps select books and he has so much integrity when it comes to selecting books that he actually wants to read, that we want to read and that we believe our listeners will actually capture a lot of value from. And I think this season and last since I've been here, we've really shown that I want to thank short for that. And then Kopec, of course, it's always a pleasure working with you and you just bring organization to the chaos. Before we do every episode and come up with some of the most thought provoking, great questions around the different books we cover. But when we talk about season four, what we just finished, I thought it was a really great season. We covered a lot and hopefully provided a lot of value to our listeners. But also fun, right? When I think back to reminiscences of a stock operator and having Brad on, I never knew that that book was sort of an inside joke for or an inside story and inside tale that Wall street traders that folks in bitcoin always talk about it. It reminded me of the aristocrats joke that Gilbert Gottfried popularized. And it was just really cool to discuss that and have someone from outside the podcast who's not necessarily an author giving us some of those insights and that inside baseball that we love so much. We had four of those guests on, including three of the authors that we interviewed. I definitely enjoyed each one of them. Given the instructional nature of presentation secrets, having Carmine Gallo on was especially helpful. We asked him some questions to apply what we read in the book directly to our careers and directly to our listeners careers, hopefully. And then I really enjoyed Patty civilaris proximity to Joe Kaloon in becoming Trader Joe. That made for a really poignant episode and a great conversation amongst us all. But again, its such a pleasure to be here and an honor to be here on the podcast and always enjoy it. I think this season was fantastic. I was able to let my hair down a little bit and be a bit less nervous before each of our recordings versus my first season last year.

Great. Thanks guys. I don't want to bury the lead. Let's get right into it. What was the best book that we read in season four, according to each of you?

So for me, I learned the most from. Am I being too subtle? I just, I really enjoyed the book. I found it interesting. It was like gripping. It had like an incredible Holocaust survivor story tale in addition to just learning a lot about the real estate market, the history of the markets, and, uh, yeah, it's just an industry that I didn't know very much about. So for me, it was the, the book that I feel like I got the most out of this year.

This was a tough question for me and I was kind of unable to really settle on one. And so given my history working in the political profession as a pollster when I first started here in DC, I sort of split my thinking a couple ways. You know, when I think of what was best constructed and most compelling to me, I was torn between the Dale Carnegie classic how to win friends and influence people, but also the Elon Musk book by Walter Isaacson. I think it's interesting that some of the best books we've read, in my opinion, come from authors who had leadership institutes or were teaching students like Dale Carnegie and Christopher Voss. The anecdotes that they're able to pull from their mentees and from their students I always find really fantastic. So thats kind of most compelling for me, most useful for personal life. I thought atomic habits was fantastic, even though it read like a blog post at times. And it was actually, I believe, serialized from some blog posts in the beginning. But Im still using some of those skills around habit formation and keeping good habits up. And then id say most useful for my personal business life, my career. I really enjoyed lean startup followed by the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs.

So Im in a very similar space to you, Kevin. My top two were probably how to win friends and influence people just because those are life skills that can help you in any situation. And Elon Musk, just because its such a fun book. There was so much for us to talk about. It was an enjoyable read. It was a page turner and so I just really had a great time with it. I would also add in the presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs because I make presentations every day. Im a college professor, right? So im literally doing a presentations every day and it's really helped me tighten those up. But if I had to pick just one, even though it didn't help me the most in my life, the one I enjoyed the most was Elon Musk. And that might also be because we had such a fun discussion about it. So really a special episode for anyone who missed it. Go back, check out season four, episode five. We dive into Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Okay, we talked about the best book. What, in your opinion, was the worst book? And I hope you can be honest, even if it was an author that we had on the show. Tell people what really was, in your opinion, the worst book, Trey.

So I really hate this question because I really did like every book we read this year. I am being honest, frankly, I always tell Kevin and David that if it's a book that I didn't want to read, then I don't want to do it right. I try to make sure that we do pick books that are going to be good. And I think that we did. I don't think we read any bad books this year, but being totally honest, when I thought about every single book and I stack ranked them and I thought it over again and I feel really guilty about this because it is one of the authors that joined, but it was becoming trader Joe with Patti Civerella. I still liked the book. I just found the structure a little bit weird. It kind of like bounces around a bit and it makes sense from what we learned from her about the way that it was written. The history is interesting that it came from just notes that had been written down and then she pulled them together and I think its great that that information is available to people, but in terms of what did I learn the most in a way that might be useful to me in the future and whatnot, I dont think im ever going to run a grocery store. So it ended up at the bottom of my list.

Yeah, when I think of my list it's so funny that we'll talk about what our favorite episode may have been later on. And just as a spoiler, what David Short just brought up as his least favorite book was actually one of my favorite episodes. But when we think about the worst books that in my opinion, I don't think any of the books were bad. And as listeners could tell you, I recommended most of them. Some of them I recommended to more of a niche audience. In hindsight, and this is going against shorts opinion, but I thought the Sam Zell book, it was enjoyable. It was a short, quick read. It seemed to have the least structure of them all, kind of jumping from deal to deal with a bit of a frenetic pace and then a slog at some points. I'd say the same for reminiscences of a stock operator, which while it was fun, I enjoyed the show a lot more than I actually enjoyed the book, which at times was getting very repetitive, I thought. But Brad and our banter during that show I think made up so much for it, and I took away a lot more from the book as a result of that. And just going back onto Sam Zell, even though I do work in commercial real estate, one thing I did appreciate about it was just how his voice was so clear and present in that book, and I really enjoyed his humility at times talking about how he learned from some of his failures. So I really hesitate to say it was the worst one. I'm not calling it bad whatsoever, but I thought in a lineup of great books that we did this season, that was the one where the structure and kind of the narrative flow sometimes got to me.

Uh oh. It's going to feel like I'm ganging up with Kevin against David here, but I agree with those bottom two, actually. Am I being too subtle? And reminiscences of a stock operator. For me, it really though, if I choose this one, it's reminiscences of a stock operator. Even though I actually really enjoyed recording the episode, I enjoyed talking to Brad. And I thought Brad brought so much value having read that book multiple times and just his insights about trading in general. So it's a great episode. But the book itself, like Kevin said, kind of repetitive. And it's kind of like I just can't get engaged with like, oh, I was excited. This thing was going up and then it was going down and then the number went down this much or that much. And those numbers don't mean anything today, of course. And just the writing itself, like, literally the text was hard for me to keep going through and I felt like I was forcing myself through it by the time I got halfway through. So yeah, that would be my bottom one for sure.

You need to have read it with Brad's old timey voice in your head. That was the secret that got me through it. You need to hear Brad saying, oh, I'm from the old country and I think it'll go up and blah, blah, blah. I think I totally get, like, what you're saying, kopec. And I do think that, like, the style is like, incredibly difficult. So like, yeah, don't question it at all. I totally get it.

But it was still a good episode. So people should go listen to season four, episode eight, and you'll basically get most of the insights from the book without having to force yourself through it. So go check that episode out. Okay. So we talked about what we thought was the best book, but the best book is not necessarily the best episode. So what did you think was our best episode of the season? The one that people who are listening to this, maybe they're tuning into business books and company for the first time. Which episode of season four should they go back and listen to? What was your favorite?

So, yeah, ironically, I'm flipping with Kevin. So, yeah, his least favorite book, or one of his least favorite reminiscences of a stock operator was what I thought was my favorite episode. I really enjoyed it because of Brad. He's the person who recommended the book to me. His insights into trading and, you know, all the craziness that happens really made it enjoyable and fun. And again, it's the reason I'd read it originally, but I also think it's the best episode because I think it is a more difficult book to read. And so I think just listening to that episode can save you that you don't need to read a book that was written in the twenties. You can instead listen to our summary, get all the tips and tricks about what dealing with markets is like, and listen to some people in modern times associate it with crypto instead of needing to understand the details of the prop trading shops of the twenties and earlier period.

And one thing too, before I go on with my favorite what I did want to say about reminiscences of a stock operator was I felt like it was an early 20th century reading of Wall street bets. And so I enjoyed it in that way, and I can see why the retail trading community has really latched onto it. But as for my favorite episode, so I kind of spoiled this before, but I thought that our conversation with Patty Civilari for becoming Trader Joe was really good. The book itself was eye opening and chock full of anecdotes and kind of insights and facts about Trader Joe's that I've been telling folks since I read it right. I just literally went to Trader Joe's for the first time in two years earlier this week, and I couldn't help but tell everyone that was there with me some of the stories from the book. I thought the evolution that Patty and Joe, through his notes that he provided to her, from Trader Joe's good time Charlie to whole earth Harry to mack the knife, and then its final incarnation, what it is today, was just a great way to frame the book. It was a good way to frame a life and business of Joe Kulum and then ultimately frame our episode, I will give a runner up here. And I thought that our episode around Elon Musk was really good as well. I thought that we had really great banter going back and forth amongst the hosts, and it sort of resembled what we had done with Ron Chernows Titan when we did the interview or when we did the episode all by ourselves and just had a really great time talking about and talking about what we took away from it.

I agree with that. I think, like, in terms of the banter between the three of us, it's got to be Elon Musk. And I like that parallel you said to Titan because that was also a large, like, really epic book that we had an incredible discussion about on the show. But if I had to put myself in the shoes of an audience member. And a lot of our audience is listening to this podcast because they want to get tips for their career, how they can grow within their career. There are two episodes that stand out to me. One is how to win friends and influence people. There's just so many great self help tips that come out of that book. And I thought we had a really good discussion. We don't always kind of summarize a whole book. That's not something we do on this show every episode. But we kind of did in that episode. And you're going to get all of those great tips just by listening to our season four episode, one episode on that, and then the other one is the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs. If you have any kind of presentation responsibilities in your work, that book is going to help you. And we had the author of the book, the best selling author of the book on the show, giving us some even further insight than what's just in the book. So if you're listening to this podcast primarily because you want help with your career, I would point you to those two episodes as being the best of the season. Okay. We did do three different author interviews. We've talked about them a little bit so far. They all had very different feels to them. What was special about each of those author interviews for the two of you? And I'll just remind people what they were. We had the author of how the Internet happened on Brian McCullough, who's also a well known podcaster himself. We had Carmine Gallo, I mentioned before the presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, and we had Patty Civilieri, who Kevin mentioned becoming trader Joe.

Well, I'll start with this one, with how the Internet happened. And I thought that one reason I liked this episode a lot was because Brian and us, it was all of us being sort of fans of the cycle and the poetry of some of these companies. And it also tied together a number of the books that we had done in the past. Right? So elements of the founders, the hard thing about hard things with Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, with Elon Musk, it was almost like a great wrap up book to that trilogy of earlier books that we had done. And I just thought that the author himself, Brian McCulloch, was so just enthusiastic about the work and went into some deeper anecdotes and some modern day applications of what was sort of pictured in that book or demonstrated in that book, from Netscape to the iPhone.

I thought that Carmine Gallo Washington really great to talk to, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that he's written about, you know, Steve Jobs and presentations, but it really was like a presentation focused book. He was just a very compelling speaker. You could tell that Carmine has really studied and understands how to, you know, give insight in a concise way, give the bullet points, repeat them. You saw him leverage a lot of the techniques that come through from the book in the. The podcast that he did with us, and I just really appreciated that with Brian. I'll give a little bit of inside baseball here. He was just a really helpful author. He gave us a lot of advice about the podcast in general that I really appreciated, and he was really just fun to talk to. He. Yeah, really, really came prepared, was interesting and compelling. And then Patti, I also really enjoyed talking to. Frankly, she was probably the nicest author that we've ever had on. She was just so friendly. She was really emotionally available. She expressed some difficult things about getting the material and dealing with Joe as he was close to death. And so, yeah, really appreciated the book and then her vulnerability in the episode.

And two things I just wanted to add as well. So with Carmine Gallo and presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, I just thought it was really cool to speak with someone so short. You mentioned how well studied he is in the techniques of Steve Jobs, but also Jeff Bezos, owing to the second book he published. And it was very cool to get his advice and get feedback on more contemporary things that we're seeing today. So, for example, we talked about how to still hold folks attention during Zoom or virtual meetings, how to apply some of the techniques in his book to zoom and virtual meetings. I even got to talk to him a bit about some of the stage Friday sometimes get before I sit in front of a focus group of ten to 14 CEO's, all the way down to voters, and I thought that was really cool. And then on the patty civil air front, one thing I really appreciated about her was she is an entrepreneur and an author, right? She has her travel industry company that she drives forward and grows. So I thought it was neat hearing from her, having known Joe Kulum and have some of those more personal stories. Plus, she's an entrepreneur.

I couldn't put it better than the two of you have put it. Three amazing authors. So thanks to the three of them for coming on the show. Okay, a little bit of inside baseball. We've done this at the end of every season. What do you think were. I want to get your real reaction. I didn't tell the guys what the answer is before the episode starts, so this is their real reaction. What do you think were our most popular and least popular two episodes this season?

I'll go first. Um, I'm going to guess Elon Musk and how to win friends and influence people as the most popular. And I'm going to guess how the Internet happened and becoming Trader Joe as the least popular episodes.

So I would actually match exactly what you said. Short for our two most popular episodes. For the least popular episodes, I am going to guess lean startup and reminiscences of a stock operator.

Okay, you guys were both halfway there. So our most popular episode this season was how to win friends and influence people. And our second most popular episode was the lean startup. So you were wrong on that one, Kevin. But our least popular you had one of them were reminiscences of a stock operator was actually the least popular, and the second least popular was becoming Trader Joe. And I think David said that one for one of the least. So you guys were pretty close, actually. And we've talked about this as a little inside baseball. We're reading these books, right? We read every book and so we need to be excited about the book. So sometimes we're doing books that aren't the most popular book just because the three of us want to read it, and it's our podcast and we do what we want. Right. So it doesn't mean that just because the episode didn't do well, that is not a good book. It just means that it's not a popular book necessarily. Right. And so people, some people are listening to the show because there's these popular books they're thinking about reading and they want to know what other people think about them or they want to get some additional insight about them and they're not following us along for every book that we take them on the journey on. So that doesn't mean we shouldn't do them and that doesn't mean that those were bad episodes, but there is definitely some element of that, of just how popular the book itself is that goes into how well the episode does.

Yeah. And im surprised that I was so wrong on lean startup, just because in hindsight, I probably shouldve put that on the more popular side. But I really enjoyed that book. And as a co founder of a startup in real estate research, I wish I had even read it sooner. I think that a lot of folks probably have heard of the lean startup methodology, but dont necessarily know the details of its implementation. And so I would definitely recommend that folks check that out. Season four, episode two, its an incredibly useful methodology and the book explains it in a very tight and authoritative way and uses anecdotes and examples from the business world to back it up.

Yeah, not an episode weve talked a lot about so far in this episode, and maybe one thats a good answer to our next question. Which season four episode undeservedly flew under the radar? So maybe, I mean, just the radar in your minds, but what do you think about maybe in terms of our audience not listening to it, but actually it was one of our better episodes. So what was the season four episode you think more people should know about that maybe wasn't one of our more popular episodes?

Yeah, I personally thought that lean startup, you know, as I had assumed that it had lower listenership, I was thinking that that would be one of the under the radar ones. I think it's great for the reasons that I've already set out there, but I had thought that maybe presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs had flown a little bit under the radar. It had a lot of good life and career advice in there. I knew that it didn't perform as well as never split the difference with Chris Voss did last season, despite us having Carmine Gallo on. And, you know, I wonder if this is a little bit of hesitation and maybe stage fright that folks have about making presentations not necessarily thinking that book applies to them in their careers, but a presentation in the way that Carmine Gallo described it doesn't have to be unveiling the iPhone before hundreds or thousands of people. It can be something very small. It can be just presenting yourself to your internal team at your company. And I think that that stage fright, that idea that presentations might not apply to me, you know, makes sense, too. With Chris Voss, everyone has negotiations. It's a bit more cinematic. The narrative is a bit more compelling, given Chris Voss's background. But I definitely want to make sure that our listeners pay attention to presentation secrets of Steve Jobs.

I just have to show reminiscences of a stock operator again. The fact that it's the least performing is not surprising to me. I think, like, it's probably difficult for our audience to even spell, like, reminiscences. I wouldn't be surprised. It's a hard word.

What are you saying about our audience?

Wow, let's say, David, I might have been able to spell reminiscences, and I'm looking at the word, but autocorrect flagged.

It for me, by the way, short. So earlier today, autocorrect actually flagged it and underlined it in red and then removed it. So even the algorithm had to reconsider the reminiscences.

I really think it, it's very old timey, and I think that's probably why. Like, I don't imagine it's an SEO driven episode. I don't think anyone's looking for reminiscences. Even if theyre looking for a book about trading, theyre not going to look about a stock operator. Literally all the words in the title are probably disinteresting to a lot of people. But I do think that the stories are incredibly classic. And having been through a couple of both crypto and financial market, bull and bear markets, not very many in the traditional markets, to be honest, on the bear side, I really found it resonated so much. It really does feel like whats happening right now, the sentiment analysis, the way that people act, the frenzy thatll happen as the top of the bull market is happening, it was all just incredibly detailed and incredibly resonant. With whats happening right now in crypto and whatnot. I really enjoyed it. I really think its a great episode to listen to. I got to show it again now that I know it was the least.

Performing, because I go after him, people are just going to think I'm a Kevin booster. And Kevin and I have been friends for 20 years, and one time he called me a sycophant. I hope he doesn't think that tonight, but I'm going to agree with him again, I think the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs, where we had the author, Carmen Gallowan, didn't get the amount of listens that it deserved. It was somewhere in the middle of the pack for this season, and it's just an amazing book. It really will help you with your presentations. And everybody does presentations. I mean, if you've even risen a little bit in your career, you do presentations, so I think everyone could benefit from it. And what a compelling speaker Carmine Gallo is in that episode. Okay, let's talk now about things that you would do differently for the whole season, right? Is there maybe a book you wouldn't have done if you could go back in time and undo it? You'd say, you know, we should not that it was like a terrible book because we said all the episodes were all right. I think we all agreed, right? But is there maybe one that we could have replaced with an even better book, maybe on the same topic? Or maybe there's just something about the flow or about how we organize ourselves or things like that that you would have done differently if you could go back and redo it.

So, Kopec, just for the record, I believe I called you a sycophant when I was a senior in college and you were a sophomore. So I was probably wrong. I definitely was wrong.

No, no, no. You were visiting. You were. Kevin and I were in the same fraternity inside baseball. Kevin was visiting a few years later, I guess, and I was like a senior. And I might actually. I might have even been in grad school already. Cause I went there for grad school too. And Kevin was like, back a few years later. That's when it was.

Well, either way, you have become such an amazing self realized individual, and I admire the amazing progress you've made in your life, having a lovely family and having an awesome career. So please don't hold that. That 22 year old who was stepping foot into the business worlds.

Four words. You were like 25. You were like 25. And it was. It was rude.

With drawing. I'm going to start with drawing. My apologies, Evan.

Sounds like the sycophant now.

Yeah, the tables have turned. Thank you so much. Short. All right, well, if I could do season four over again, I would remove all of that conversation we just had. No kidding. You know, when I think about season four, I look back and I think it seems like we front loaded the season with some management classics, business leadership books, and then ended with some softer stories and then reminiscences and atomic habits. Right. And perhaps we could have spread the management ones out a bit or picked another classic like how to win friends and influence people to bookend the season at the end. You know, atomic habits was great and a healthy body mind, good habits, all of that can benefit your career. But there wasn't as much a sharp line to business leadership and success and career in atomic habits. And if you remember in that podcast episode, we went back and there was an addendum that James Clear had kind of tacked on the end via posting on his website about how these different habit formation can apply to business. But it was mainly about marketing, like consumer packaged goods and if you own a store or if you own a consumer brand. And it really wasnt helpful for modern day business leadership. So I thought that was one thing I would change. And then one other comment I would have is last season we did titan the life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. And I thought that was a really good, what I'll term a challenge book for us and our listeners. It was significantly longer, but I would say the reading experience and then us discussing it was just so much richer than some of our shorter books. Like the Sam Zell book and atomic habits. So I personally propose that we do a longer classic this next season. Coming up, season five, weve discussed thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. So I think that would be a great candidate. And then otherwise, just in hindsight, looking back at season four, I think we actually improved our season length and had a faster season by about two months. And I think the more regularity that we can provide for our listeners, the more frequency of, or the greater frequency of episodes will do us all better. And Im looking forward to an amazing season five with you both.

That's the big one for me, I think just trying to be a little bit crisper on the consistency is the one thing. And actually, I think I called this out either in the last season or the one before. So I guess I'm, I'm repeating myself. But, yeah, try to, I mean, we did, we did improve a little bit. We were a little bit quicker. But, yeah, try to try to get back to monthly as best we can. You know, while being reasonable people have lives. We'll figure it out.

This is getting ridiculous, but I agree, again with both of you. But everything Kevin said and especially the idea of that they weren't well spread out, that we kind of did this similar kind of level books at the same time and didnt have the management stuff spread out. And then also the economic history, we didnt really do one this season and we did have such a good time, you might say. Elon Musk, you could argue Elon Musk, you could argue how the Internet happened. But even though I loved having Brian McAuliffe on, its kind of a more shallow book because its very high level. Its like it goes through many different kinds of companies. And we had this deep industry history book in Titan. And believe it or not, even though its this really deep book, it actually is one of our very well performing episodes. Again, not that thats why we do every book, but clearly it resonated with our listeners. And so id love to see us do a deep book like that again in season five. Okay. Tell us a bit about some books that youve been reading that arent on the show. And we dont want to do a huge laundry list. But maybe theres one or maybe two books that youve read on your own over the last 16 months as season four has been going on that you would recommend to our listenership Trey.

So I havent actually finished it yet, but I am midway through the guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. And I really enjoy it. It is definitely not a business book, although I think there are definitely business lessons that come from it. But it is a story about World War 1. August was the first month of the war and so its very focused on that. But its focused a lot on the prehistory of world War one as well, the wars in 1870 and the, the death of kings. And it really just paints an incredible picture and just so much detail into how all of this atrocity can happen with everyone just feeling like they're doing the right thing. And yeah, I really enjoying it and I think any history focused listeners I think, would really enjoy it. Obviously World War one in particular, I think it's sort of one of the seminal classics of that if you're interested in World War one. But yeah, anyone interested in war histories, I would definitely recommend it for.

So im actually now going to mirror off of short and go along with a book that is not precisely a business book. Definitely not a business book, but it does create a bit of a big business sustainability utopia turned dystopia. And so the book is devolution by Max Brooks. And some of you will recognize Max Brooks as Mel Brooks son. And hes also the author of World War ZT, which was an amazing book. And I highly recommend that you'll now be seeing some of my sense of humor in some of the books I read or character that I'm looking for. I think that World War Z, the book was fantastic. It was just adapted into a terrible movie with Brad Pitt. They basically bought the name of the book and didn't do anything else from the book, didn't really follow the main conceit, but back to devolution. So devolution is about a community of tech forward urban dwellers who moved to the shadow of Mount Rainier to set up an eco friendly, yet still super high tech, super connected colony. So theres some fun near future elements in there, including Amazon delivery drones, the sustainable energy generation techniques that theyre using. But needless to say, everything goes down when Mount Rainier erupts and a family of sasquatch happen upon them. So its really a story of how everyone reacts when cut off from the creature comforts of technology. And big company hierarchy and bureaucracy is also in there. And so I definitely recommend it for folks. I think it's a really fun book. The audiobook is fantastic with a great cast as well.

Okay. And as for myself, I'm going to recommend two books. The first is a business book. It's called wrestling with life by George Reinatz. And this is a deep cut it's not like a popular book, but it's about a guy who grows up in Hungary in the 1930s and his family is all killed in the Holocaust. And actually hes in a concentration camp. And that is like a hard chapter to read. I mean, it is like a difficult chapter to read. Anyway, he survives, he makes it over to Canada, to Montreal, and he starts a furniture company and he turns it into like a really large furniture company. But at the same time, also when he first gets to Canada and he gets there, when hes a teenager, he becomes a really talented wrestler. And it's kind of about how these threads in his life, surviving the Holocaust, losing all of his family, and then becoming a wrestler, kind of built him up as a person to enable him to be successful in the furniture business. And it's not a long book. It's like 150 pages, something like that. But it's just a really good book. And then I'm going to recommend another book that's, I'm not even going to recommend a specific book, in fact. But I read a long biography of Napoleon, and I don't know if it's the best biography of Napoleon because I haven't read more than that one biography of Napoleon. But as kind of an american centric person, I didn't know like a lot of the details about Napoleon's conquest of Europe and his management of the french state and his whole history. But it's incredibly fascinating. And so if you have that gap in your history knowledge, like I did, I can't recommend enough because it fills in so much, it fills in so much about, like how modern nations were formed and why kind of Europe is the way it is right now. And so if you have that kind of gap, you dont know a lot about Napoleon. I so recommend. Its so interesting, too. He just had such an interesting life. He did so many interesting things beyond even just the wars that I really think its worth getting into that history if you want to understand the modern world. So any good biography of Napoleon? Because I think I read a pretty good one. I dont know if its the best, but I recommend to people who havent done that. Okay, lets talk about whats coming up. Season five. Season five were excited about. Weve been making plans. David, Kevin and I have some ways were going to change things up a little bit. So do you want to tell us a little bit about some of the things were planning for season five?

So just to kick it off and recognizing that were going into election season and David Kopec is a self described american centric person. I was thinking, and given my heritage in political polling and political consulting when I first arrived here in DC, that got me thinking about doing some different sort of industry books and narratives with authors, or even non authors who are just industry specialists have made their careers in these industries to really just dive into that. So one example that I gave the team earlier was, like I mentioned political management, political campaigns, and how thats turned from sort of a civic endeavor to an enterprise. Right. And so the idea being have someone who works in political consulting come on as we read a book about the business of politics, for example, or even sports management. Right. Delving into how some of these different business books and methodologies can apply to those industries, finding books that get to that idea as well. So I would encourage our listeners to check out the show notes, check out any surveys that well be sending out, and give us some feedback, give us some ideas around the industries that you are all working in. And if you even have suggestions for books that really cover the business of business in those industries, I think wed be super interested in that.

Trey, I feel like Kevin kind of covered most of the things I was thinking about talking about. But yeah, just to reiterate, I think were really excited to bring on special guests again, I think shifting that from continuing the people who love and are passionate about a book and an industry, but also shifting towards the understanding the industry, having discussions that are not specifically about a book necessarily, or a couple changes for next year, I'm excited about.

Yeah, and short, I think the difference between sort of my approach and yours as well, and I think we should do both. Mine would still be, let's talk to an author of a book about that industry. Whereas I think what I love about your idea is having kind of special guests on who aren't necessarily the authors to then give us some flavor into that industry and what we've sort of produced. And our thinking is a hybrid of that in some ways. But I think no matter what, our listeners will find it really interesting and we'll be laser focused on providing ideas and feedback from each of these books and each of these industry specialists that draw a sharp line to applicability to your careers and what you're doing in your industries.

And at the same time, we're committed to still bringing authors on, of course. And that's something we started in season three and I think has been very successful for us. So look forward to having a lot of interesting authors on in season five. And like Kevin mentioned, we're going to put out a survey. It'll be there in the show notes. We'll also have a similar poll on Spotify if you're listening on Spotify. So please do take the time to fill that out. I will also just mention the first book that we're going to be doing in season five, which is thinking fast and slow. I think somebody already mentioned it by Daniel Kahneman. I hope I pronounced that right. And that's kind of a deeper book. It's a longer book for sure. And actually it was the last book my dad read before he died. My dad died about eight and a half years ago and he was not a big reader, actually, even though he had a PhD in computer science and he was a computer science professor, he really did not read a lot of books. But for whatever reason, as he was dying, he decided Im going to start reading books before I die again, I guess, which he hadnt been doing for a few decades. And that was the last book he read. So its a little creepy for me. And I have his copy and it has notes in it and it describes different kinds of ways of thinking. And he actually highlighted a couple pages and put a sticky note in David on it. So anyway, its going to be a very interesting experience for me over the next couple of months reading that book together with the two of you. So looking forward to that. But looking forward also to all of our author interviews bringing on these special guests. And you know, its called business books and company. Right. And weve been doing the books part with the author interviews and having occasionally a special guest part. Weve been starting to do the company part a little better and now were going to maybe shift over to that other side of the ampersand and doing a little bit more of the company side. As we wrap up today, I just want to say thank you to both of you. It's been wonderful working with both of you again this season. I also want to say thank you to the authors who came on the show this season. And thank you to Brad Mills as well for coming on the show. That was really great. Want to thank a friend of the show, Mark Gandy, for connecting us with Patty Civilire. So he really made that connection for us. And also want to thank our editor. He is there at the bottom of our show notes every time. Giacomo Guattari, we call him double g on the show behind the scenes. And he does a great job editing our episodes and he saved us in some sticky editing situations we've had the last couple of seasons. So thank you to Giacomo. We really appreciate the work he does. Okay, before we wrap up, is there anything that either of you want to plug? And if not, that's okay. How can our listeners get in touch with you?

You can follow me on xavidg short.

You can follow me on x, formally known as twitter udaxbasement. H u d a k s baseman.

And you can follow me on x at Dave kopeck. D A v e K o P e c I do want to mention a couple things related to the show. We have an Amazon book club. There's always a link to it in the bottom of our show notes. It's not huge, it has a few hundred people in it. But if you want to be like really up to date on exactly what we're reading and when we plan to finish each book, you can join that book club and you'll get notifications by email every time that we switch to reading a new book. We also now have a YouTube channel. Now it's an audio podcast. But if you prefer to listen to the show on YouTube, which actually a lot of people listen to audio podcasts on YouTube, believe it or not, you can do that. So I'll put the link to that in the show notes. And I want to remind everybody. Also, don't forget to subscribe to us or follow us on your podcast player of choice. We have a lot of exciting episodes planned for season five. And don't forget to leave us a review too. We have a lot of great reviews, but we can always use more great reviews. So whether you're using Spotify or Apple podcasts or whatever you're using, go in there and take the time, if you enjoy the show, to leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening to season four. We'll be back with season five not too long from now, in just a couple months. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

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