The Chris Voss Show

Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go by David A. Weintraub Vanderbilt.edu David Weintraub received his Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Astronomy at Yale in 1980 and his PhD in Geophysics & Space Physics at UCLA in 1989. He is a Professor of Astronomy at Vanderbilt University, where he founded and directs the Communication of Science program and does research on the formation of stars and planets. He is the 2015 winner of the Klopsteg Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers, which recognizes the outstanding communication of the excitement of contemporary physics to the general public. His most recent book, Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go was published in 2018, has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Polish, and will appear in a revised, paperback edition in November 2020. His previous books include Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It? (2014), How Old is the Universe? (2010), and Is Pluto a Planet? (2006). He has also co-written seven astronomy books for children.

7 Aug 202057min

How To Be Fan-f*cking-tastic! by Max A. Borges Fan-fucking-tastic.com How am I doing? I’m fan-fucking-tastic of course! I’ve always been an optimistic person. That optimism has led me to countless opportunities both personal and professional that have given me more success than I had ever dreamed of. Through the years I have accumulated bits of wisdom that serve me each and every day. This simple book contains some of that wisdom in hopes of helping YOU create a more fulfilling and abundant life – a life that is fan-fucking-tastic! Each time you pick up this book, something new may resonate and help you in some area of your life that needs a little something. Be sure and keep it close by for those days you need it.-Max Borges Max Borges is an entrepreneur who in 2002 founded the Max Borges Agency - a tech-focused public relations firm. By studying the habits of business and strategy icons, he built his agency to more than 50 employees and $10 million a year in revenue. Max lives in Miami Beach with his amazing wife and three children. He also hosts a podcast called Unconventional Genius, invests in tech startups and listens to heavy metal

6 Aug 202057min

Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason by Justin E. H. Smith Jehsmith.com A fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationality It’s a story we can’t stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal.” But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today―from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump―Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely. Justin E. H. Smith is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (2011), Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (2015), The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (2016), and Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason (2019), all published with Princeton University Press. He is an editor-at-large of Cabinet Magazine. The main-belt asteroid 13585 Justinsmith was named after him in 2015.

4 Aug 20201h 21min

The Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President by Jill Wine-Banks Jillwinebanks.com Obstruction of justice, the specter of impeachment, sexism at work, shocking revelations: Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside her trial by fire as a Watergate prosecutor. It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely thirty years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts―and prevailed. In The Watergate Girl, Jill Wine-Banks opens a window on this troubled time in American history. It is impossible to read about the crimes of Richard Nixon and the people around him without drawing parallels to today’s headlines. The book is also the story of a young woman who sought to make her professional mark while trapped in a failing marriage, buffeted by sexist preconceptions, and harboring secrets of her own. Her house was burgled, her phones were tapped, and even her office garbage was rifled through. At once a cautionary tale and an inspiration for those who believe in the power of justice and the rule of law, The Watergate Girl is a revelation about our country, our politics, and who we are as a society. Jill Wine-Banks is currently an MSNBC Legal Analyst, appearing regularly on primetime and daytime shows. She also appears on PBS, Canadian and Australian networks, Sirius XM, NPR and other radio shows, including Stephanie Miller’s, and podcasts. A sought-after speaker, Jill appears before professional, political, women’s and business groups, universities and law schools. In addition, Jill has written OpEds for the NBC.com, Chicago Tribune, Politico, and Huffington Post. She has also been featured in several documentaries and films, including Academy Award winner Charles Ferguson’s Watergate, or How We Got Control of an Out of Control President, Robert Redford’s All The President’s Men Revisited, ABC 20/20, and Michael Moore’s Farenheit 11/9.

1 Aug 20201h 17min

Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics by Stephen Wendel Designers and managers hope their products become essential for users—integrated into their lives like Instagram, Lyft, and others have become. Such deep integration isn’t accidental: it’s a process of careful design and iterative learning, especially for technology companies. This guide shows you how to apply behavioral science—research that supports many products—to help your users achieve their goals using your product. In this updated edition, Stephen Wendel, head of behavioral science at Morningstar, takes you step-by-step through the process of incorporating behavioral science into product design and development. Product managers, UX and interaction designers, and data analysts will learn a simple and effective approach for identifying target users and behaviors, building the product, and gauging its effectiveness. Learn the three main strategies to help people change behavior Identify behaviors your target audience seeks to change—and obstacles that stand in their way Develop effective designs that are enjoyable to use Measure your product’s impact and learn ways to improve it Combine behavioral science with data science to pinpoint problems and test potential solutions Dr. Wendel is the head of Behavioral Science at Morningstar, where his team develops and tests practical techniques to help people overcome common behavioral obstacles with their finances. Steve is the author of three books on applied behavioral science and founder of the non-profit Action Design Network, which educates the public about behavioral science and product design. He has two wonderful kids, who don’t care about behavioral science at all.

31 Jul 202052min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast - As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon by Daniel T. Rodgers Daniel Rodgers Webpage How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding document of American identity and exceptionalism “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,” John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England’s founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop’s long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop’s text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop’s words―from Winthrop’s own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln’s haunting reference to this “almost chosen people,” to the “city on a hill” that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop’s words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of “timeless” texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past. Dan Rodgers is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He is a prize-winning teacher and the author of six prize-winning books on the history of American ideas, arguments, assumptions, and culture. His Age of Fracture, which won the coveted Bancroft Prize in American history in 2012, not only helped put the word fracture on the map as a description of the last forty years of American history but showed how the very idea of “society” began to fall apart after the 1970s. His latest book, As a City on a Hill, available in paperback this fall, hones in on the history of one of the most iconic phrases in recent American politics: the claim that ever since their beginning Americans knew that they were destined to be a model to the world. The book uncovers the myths behind that assumption. It shows how a 17th century document’s words were lost, how they were found again, and how they were filled with radically new meanings. Finally, and most importantly, it asks what the phrase “city on a hill” ought to mean for us now.

30 Jul 20201h 8min

Blue-Collar Cash Love Your Work, Secure Your Future, and Find Happiness for Life By Ken Rusk Kenrusk.com Ken Rusk is the author of BLUE-COLLAR CASH: Love Your Work, Secure Your Future, and Find Happiness for Life (out now from Dey Street Books/HarperCollins). He is also a blue-collar construction engineer and founder of Rusk Industries, Inc. who has launched multiple successful endeavors over the last 30 plus years. He believes that anyone can realize their dreams and live a comfortable life regardless of their educational background or past.

29 Jul 202052min

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor Katharina Pistor Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively “codes” certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital—and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients’ needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations—assets that exist only in law. A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it. Awards and Recognition One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2019: Economics One of the Financial Times' Readers' Best Books of 2019 One of Business Insider's Richard Feloni's best books of 2019 on how we can rethink today's capitalism and improve the economy A Project Syndicate Best Read in 2019 Katharina Pistor is a leading scholar and writer on corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, and comparative law and legal institutions. Pistor is the author or co-author of nine books. Her most recent book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, examines how assets such as land, private debt, business organizations, or knowledge are transformed into capital through contract law, property rights, collateral law, and trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law. The Code of Capital was named one of the best books of 2019 by the Financial Times and Business Insider.

28 Jul 202054min