Q1 2026 Favorite Reads

90+% value comes from 10% of what we read. Here’s my favorites from Q1 2026 

Books 

1. The Learning Game by Ana Lorena Fabrega
   • In depth breakdown on how kids learn and how to teach them in both an effective and fun way 
   • Core takeaway was to let kids learn through independence, play, and activities they’re interested in 
   • She pushes for for intrinsic motivation using 5 things
     1. Give kids choices so they’re accountable/invested
     2. Involve kids in the decision (ie they decide what to study) 
     3. Be specific with feedback and questions
     4. Have conversations about why you’re doing a task. Be upfront
     5. Make things fun 
   • Don’t fear mistakes and instead kids learn from failure like in real world
   • Her recommendations for true learning (p 66)
     1. Get kids to follow passion projects and use them as opportunities to teach whatever it is (ex: building a treehouse) 
     2. Teach your kids to ask why questions and question assumptions so they understand things better. 
     3. Help kids re-examine things from different perspectives (eg edit writing from different device, read story out loud) so that they’re feynman techniqueing 
     4. Push the kids into deeper questions (eg how does this actually work) 
2. Testosterone by Carole Hooven
   • Deep dive into how testosterone differences throughout life dramatically shapes men and women 
   • The variances in sexes are often based on what the reproductive advantages are. Males have drive generally to have more babies while women nurture/care for their babies 
   • While some of this is debated, Carole Hooven looks across different animals and different societies to look at the consistent impact of testosterone 
3. How to Know a Person by David Brooks
   • Core Takeaway is the art of seeing others and listening deeply to them is true wisdom, creates the deepest relationships, and is core to our humanity
   • Some of my favorite parts are deep dives into how to be a good listener and deeply paying attention “The solution as a listener is to treat attention as all or nothing. If you’re here in this conversation, you’re going to stop doing anything else and just pay attention to this. You’re going to apply what some experts call the SLANT method: sit up, lean forward, ask questions, nod your head, track the speaker. Listen with your eyes. That’s paying attention 100 percent.” 

Articles

Jan 2026

1. Nate Silver: Did Las Vegas get too greedy?
   • Vegas has seen a decline in overall rates and visitor volume is lowest since Great Financial Crisis
   • Talks about how a big thing he has seen is that Vegas is trying to squeeze every dollar out of people (ie worse odds in Blackjack/higher take rate in slots) and this makes it less welcoming  
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2. Derek Thompson 26 most important ideas for 2026
   • Grab bag of Derek Thompson’s thoughts heading into the new year
   • Everyone is reading less and watching TV (or video) more
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   • Data centers are taking a ton of energy so expect it to be a political issue soon
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   • Fascinatingly Nigeria now has more birth than all of Europe
   • Home ownership differences are driven significantly by the interest rates people have on their houses. There’s a huge percent with 3 and 4% interest rates who just won’t sell because of those rates
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3. Noah Smith: Let’s save the human species
   • Overall birth rates have dropped across the world and Noah looks at these and proposes that we need to make it easier to have children worldwide
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   • Fascinatingly China’s birth rate has dropped extremely fast resulting in a shrinking society with no chance of slowing on the horizon
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4. Morgan Housel: A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure About
   • Morgan’s takeaways on different psychological takeaways. A few resonated especially with me including
   • People’s actions make sense with enough information so be kind
   • Most harm is unintentional
     • Great example that people don’t try to cause evil, but it comes unintentionally based on them doing some action they justify
     • Can draw the comparison to Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem
   • Believes we should build more homes as fast as possible and affordable housing is causing all kinds of problems
     • People are less likely to get married, have kids, and are more depressed with less housing
     • When average age first home owned has gone from 29 in 1980 to 40 now that’s a problem
   • Interesting point where he talks about how politics goes in cycles and it’s possible we look back on this time of polarization as a generational bottom
   • His theory is that nostalgia is caused because we are overworried. I quite like this
     • I have a theory about nostalgia: It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the time.

Feb 2026

1. The Atlantic: High-End Construction Really Does Help Everyone
   • A deep dive into the housing impacts of a luxury condo development in Hawaii seeing where people who moved in moved from and what impact was on overall market
   • Takeaway is that building more luxury housing frees up housing elsewhere so that other people can move into those lesser units and everyone ends up better off
   • Great example of classical supply/demand and how building more of any housing impacts everyone positively and there’s nothing negative about “luxury housing” 
2. Howard Marks: AI Hurtles Ahead
   • Howard Marks deep dive into AI the extreme rate of growth of capabilities
   • Asks a series of interesting questions pointing out how the capabilities being incredible are distinct from if capex spending is too high and valuations are independent. 
   • Recommends a prudent approach where one neither sits out entirely or goes all in 

March 2026

1. Emily Oster: Stop! Don’t Throw Away That Breast Milk
   • Emily Oster’s terrific article for parents about how CDC guidelines of how long you can keep out breastmilk are overly conservative 
   • Visual of what to do is extremely helpful for new parents
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2. Brent Beshore: The Question We Forget to Ask
   • A fundamental look at AI and how it is shifting our perspectives 
   • While we feel we can answer almost any question with AI, we may not ask the hardest ones like God and the meaning of life
   • Additionally, we may lose the ability to sit deeply with things and the struggle of not knowing. Because of this, he advocates for a “Sabbath” which would involve us not using it to sit and struggle and appreciate difficulty of not knowing 
3. Michael Moubossion: Bayes and Base Rates. How History Can Guide Our Assessment of the Future
   • A deep dive into the historical rates of all companies growth rates and how the growth rates proposed for AI companies are beyond anything that’s ever existed
   • Lovely OpenAI sales forecast a 108% CAGR in revenue growth until 2029. Yet no company has ever even had anything above 75+
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