Links

Information Regarding the 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting (LINK)

Warren Buffett may have ditched airline stocks and spent $20 billion on stock buybacks, investor Chris Bloomstran says (LINK)

What the Coronavirus Crisis Reveals About American Medicine - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Medicine is a system for delivering care and support; it’s also a system of information, quality control, and lab science. All need fixing.

Nassim Taleb on warnings over systemic risks from global pandemics (video from last week) (LINK)

When Your Fund Beats the Market, Ask: Which Market? - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Brent Beshore chats with Tobias Carlisle on The Acquirers Podcast (LINK)

Macro Voices Podcast: Hot Topic #14: Crude Oil BLACK SWAN ALERT with Jim Bianco (LINK)

Today's Audible Daily Deal is worthwhile: Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

The contenders – and challenges – in the race to cure Covid - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

A Complete History of Pandemics - by Vaclav Smil (LINK) [Excerpted from his 2008 book, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next 50 Years.]

Related previous post: Vaclav Smil on pandemics and growth

And for those analysts and aspiring analysts out there that may have missed the Friday afternoon post: Behind the Balance Sheet

Links

"If the business changes in a material way, you’d better change your business model. Or somebody else will. And then you’ll even have more changes facing you.... Capitalism is creative destruction. And sometimes, you’re on the short end of that." --Warren Buffett (2009)

"Some of our businesses have a shared-hardship model, where they don’t layoff, at least not yet. And the businesses with that model tend to be very strongly placed economically. So I guess it shows that Benjamin Franklin was right, when he said, 'It's hard for an empty sack to stand upright.' So we’re all over the map on that, and so is all of industry. But I do think an ideal model would be a business so strong that it could operate in the shared-hardship mode instead of the layoffs." --Charlie Munger (2009)

"Yeah, some are doing that, where you give up hours. But a lot of operations don’t lend themselves to that very well, either. So...in other cases, you basically have to close down whole plants. That’s just the nature of it. You really can’t operate every plant at 50 percent and have it work as effectively as shutting down the least-productive plants." --Warren Buffett (2009)

"In a world where you sometimes have to amputate a limb to stay alive, you can’t expect that every business can stay exactly as it is." --Charlie Munger (2009)

***

Klarman Made $1 Billion Hedging Markets. He Still Lost Money (LINK) [If anyone happens to have a copy of a Baupost quarterly update letter during this time, and is willing to share, it would be greatly appreciated (valueinvestingworld@gmail.com).]

The first 4 video replays of Grant Williams' 2020 Hmmminar Series are available online (LINK) [Marc Cohodes is the latest one from last night, and the next one is scheduled for tonight, with John Hussman.]

FUNDSMITH Annual Shareholders' Meeting - 25th February 2020 (video) (LINK)

Apple, Amazon, and Common Enemies -  by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Sarah Tavel - Consumer & Marketplace Investing (LINK)

The Daily Podcast: A Kids’ Guide to Coronavirus (LINK)

The Peter Attia Drive (podcast): #104 - COVID-19 for kids with Olivia Attia (LINK)

Recode Decode Podcast: Niall Ferguson: How viruses (and fake news stories) spread, and how America screwed up its coronavirus response (LINK)

TED Connects: Why sleep matters now more than ever | Matt Walker (video) (LINK)

The Gene | Part 1: Dawn of the Modern Age of Genetics | PBS (video) (LINK) [A Ken Burns documentary, inspired by Siddhartha Mukherjee's book The Gene.]

WHO must answer serious questions before it is trusted with leading a Covid-19 inquiry - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

The Shelves Are Empty, the Test Swabs Are Gone - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

Some of Warren Buffett’s comments on inflation over the years (LINK)

Book of the day (PDF): Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations - by Jens O. Parsson

Links

Here's what's in the $2T stimulus package — and what's next (LINK)

GMO White Paper | Memo to the (Virtual) Investment Committee II: Fear and the Psychology of Bear Markets - by James Montier (LINK)

Q&A with Murray Stahl (audio recorded March 24, 2020) (LINK)

MOI Global: Isaac Schwartz on Intelligent Investing in Crisis Mode (video) (LINK)

Corporate Socialism: The Government is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You - by Nassim Taleb (with Mark Spitznagel) (LINK)

The curious age discrimination of coronavirus - by Matt Ridley (LINK)

The Pandemic in My Neighborhood - by Michael Lewis (LINK)

How Does the Coronavirus Behave Inside a Patient? - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Links

The Streaming Wars: Its Models, Surprises, and Remaining Opportunities - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

Star of the North: How Warren Buffett Bought the Best Industrial Firm in Israel [H/T Linc] (LINK)

William Nygren at the Ben Graham VI Conference (video) (LINK)

Joel Greenblatt at the Ben Graham VI Conference (video) (LINK)

Bob Robotti at the Ben Graham VI Conference (video) (LINK) [His Subsea 7 thesis starts around the 7-minute mark.]

40 Years Later, Lessons From the Rise and Quick Decline of the First ‘Killer App’ ($) (LINK)

Meditations On Meditation - by Blas Moros (LINK)

The Promise and Price of Cellular Therapies - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Links

"In 1928 and 1929 there occurred a wholesale and disastrous relaxation of the standards of safety previously observed by the reputable houses of issue. This was shown in the sale of many new offerings of inferior grade, aided in part by questionable methods of presenting the facts to the public. The general collapse in values affected these unsound and unseasoned issues with particular severity, so that the losses suffered by investors in many of these flotations have been little short of appalling." --Benjamin Graham and David Dodd (1934 edition of Security Analysis)

Bill Gates: Grilling and chilling with Warren Buffett (video) (LINK)

Five Lessons from History - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Buy And Verify - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

Why Your Mortgage is So Complicated: The History and Opportunity of the Modern Mortgage (video) (LINK)

Risks and Opportunities in the Battery Supply Chain (LINK)

The end of mobile - by Benedict Evans (LINK)

Investing in the Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 (LINK)

What Amazon Might Want With Boost Mobile (LINK)

Dyson Patent Applications Offer Hints at Its Electric Car (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends: Overcoming Biases for Effective Decision-Making (with Michael Mauboussin) (LINK)

a16z Podcast: The Economics of Expensive Medicines (LINK)

AI: Hype vs. Reality Podcast: AI That Drives (LINK)

Self-driving cars: the greatest automotive industry disruption since Henry Ford’s Model-T assembly line… just around the corner. Right? That’s the hype—but is it reality? Are we mere blocks away from our neighborhood streets and freeways being filled with autonomous cars? Find out in the premiere episode of AI: Hype vs. Reality, a new podcast and video series in which Jessica Chobot, veteran host of Nerdist News and Bizarre States, puts present-day artificial intelligence technology to the test in real-world situations. And separates the hype from reality.

Masters in Business Podcast: Scott Galloway Discusses the Algebra of Happiness (LINK)

Related book: The Algebra of Happiness

Freakonomics Radio: 379. How to Change Your Mind (LINK)

Why Hundreds of Puffins Washed Up Dead on an Alaskan Beach - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Outspoken Oncology Podcast: Physician, Scientist, and Author Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Related books: 1) The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer; 2) The Gene: An Intimate History 

Related documentary: Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (3-part Ken Burns documentary, and free for Amazon Prime members)

Science Friday Podcast: SciFri Extra: A Relatively Important Eclipse (LINK)

This week marks the 100th anniversary of an eclipse that forever changed physics and our understanding of the universe. 

In May 1919, scientists set out for Sobral, Brazil, and Príncipe, an island off the west coast of Africa, to photograph the momentarily starry sky during a total eclipse. Their scientific aim was to test whether the sun’s gravity would indeed bend light rays from faraway stars, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. After analyzing the data from the brief minutes of darkness, they declared Einstein correct. 

Carlo Rovelli, physicist and author, tells Ira the story.

Links

I'm back after attending the Project Punch Card Conference last week. Congratulations to the organizers for putting together a great inaugural event in pursuit of a great cause. And for those that want to receive future updates about the project, you can join its email list HERE.

Boyar Research was one of the sponsors of the conference, and it's that time of year when they are getting ready to publish The Forgotten Forty, which features one-page reports on the forty companies that they believe have the greatest potential to outperform the leading indices in the year ahead due to a catalyst that they see on the horizon. The report has a successful track record and, once again, they're providing a link to receive three complimentary Forgotten Forty reports from last year’s report for readers of this blog.... Link to: Complimentary 3-report sample of The Forgotten Forty

***

David Abrams, who rarely makes public appearances, lays out his investing strategy — and cautions against being too patient (LINK)

"We make a lot of money from mucking around in the garbage, and we also buy nice shiny things, and we care what we pay for both," he said. 

The firm puts a three- to five-year time horizon on stocks, looking for a minimum return of 15% on its first purchase, he said. 

"There has to be a point sooner than 10 year where you're determining whether you are being successful or not successful," he said.

What You Can Learn From How Warren Buffett's Investment Process Evolved (LINK)

The Housing Boom Is Already Gigantic. How Long Can It Last? - by Robert J. Shiller (LINK)

How Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (LINK)

James Dyson: ‘The Public Wants to Buy Strange Things’ [H/T Collaborative Fund] (LINK)

Elon Musk on 60 Minutes (video) (LINK)

Is there a signal in the noise? Yield Curves, Economic Growth and Stock Prices! - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

Lampert's Hedge Fund Makes Bid for Sears Stores and Assets (LINK)

Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials. - by Derek Thompson (LINK)

Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy (LINK)

What’s Next in Consumer Startups? (video) (LINK)

Why Small Habits Make a Big Difference (LINK)

Jeremy Grantham on the Masters in Business podcast (LINK)

Brent Beshore on the Capital Allocators Podcast (LINK)

Related book: The Messy Marketplace

How I Built This podcast: Airbnb's Joe Gebbia (LINK)

NPR Planet Money podcast: Why Car Safety Is A Trade Barrier (LINK)

Siddhartha Mukherjee talks with Peter Attia (podcast) (LINK)

Origin Stories: Carl Sagan (podcast) (LINK)

The Leakey Foundation's award-winning Origin Stories podcast has returned for its third season. The latest episode is a never-before-released lecture given by Carl Sagan in 1977. In this talk from The Leakey Foundation's archive, Sagan explores the origins and evolution of human intelligence.

Ebola detectives race to identify hidden sources of infection as outbreak spreads (LINK)

When a Killer Climate Catastrophe Struck the World's Oceans (LINK)

Book of the day: How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

Links

"What makes common stock prices so hard to predict is that a general liquid market for common stocks creates, from time to time, either in sectors of the market or in the whole market, a Ponzi scheme. In other words, you have an automatic process where people get sucked in and other people come in because it worked last month or last year. And it can build to perfectly ridiculous levels, and the levels can last for considerable periods. Trying to predict that kind of thing, sort of a Ponzi scheme which is, if you will, accidentally thrown into the valuation of common stocks by just the forces of life, by definition that’s going to be very, very hard to predict. But that’s what makes it so dangerous to short stocks, even when they’re grossly overvalued. It’s hard to know just how overvalued they can become in addition to the overvaluation that exists. " --Charlie Munger (2002 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting)

John Huber's long thesis on Facebook (LINK)

Gabriel Grego's short thesis pitch on Aphria at the Kase Learning Shorting Conference (Video, Slides)

Chris Brown's short thesis pitch on Tilray at the Kase Learning Shorting Conference (Slides)

Morgan Creek Capital Management - Q3 2018 Market Review & Outlook Letter (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter, December 2018: The Art of Defaulting (LINK)

Eddie Lampert Shattered Sears, Sullied His Reputation, and Lost Billions of Dollars. Or Did He? [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Drip, Drip, Drip - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Hitting the Pause Button - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Do I Deserve What I Have? Part II - by Russ Roberts (LINK)

a16z Video: When Advertising Isn’t Enough (LINK)

oGoLead Leadership Podcast: Paul Varga, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Brown Forman (LINK)

It’s Time to Study Whether Eating Particular Diets Can Help Heal Us - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Subtract - by Derek Sivers (LINK)

"The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." --Warren Buffett 

Links

From Gene Editing to A.I., How Will Technology Transform Humanity? (LINK)

Five big thinkers — Regina Barzilay, George Church, Jennifer Egan, Catherine Mohr and Siddhartha Mukherjee — puzzle over the future of the future.

The end of the beginning (video) (LINK)

In his now annual state-of-innovation talk at the a16z Summit in November 2018, Andreessen Horowitz’ Benedict Evans walks through where we are now in software eating the world… and how things may continue to change over the next 10 years.

Thoughts and notes from Liberty Investor Day 2018 (LINK)

Facebook and the Age of Manipulation - by Evan Osnos (LINK)

Pivot Podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway: Facebook’s dirty tricks (LINK)

The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog” (LINK)

A massive change: Nations redefine the kilogram [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Links

"Students of financial history can point to historic levels of valuation to suggest that we are in a bubble. But students of psychology may be needed to complete the picture. For one thing, the financial markets have been so strong for so long that fear of market risk has mostly evaporated. People who used to hold bank certificates of deposit now maintain a portfolio of growth stocks. It is not really within human nature to comprehend that you may not know everything you think you know, and, further, that what you believe in could change on a dime.... With more and more of the market value of U.S. equities represented by lofty (in some cases infinite) multiples of current results, a change in sentiment could wipe out a large percentage of investor net worth. Sentiment, existing only in the minds of investors, is subject to change quickly and without notice." --Seth Klarman (June 1999)

Howard Marks' interview on Nasdaq Spotlight (video) (LINK)

Related book: Mastering the Market Cycle

The Battle for the Home - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

The BP Statistical Review of World Energy [H/T @Valuetrap13] (LINK)

For Doctors, Delving Deeper as a Way to Avoid Burnout - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

If you keep hearing the name Jordan Peterson but still don't know much about him, this two-and-a-half-hour video conversation seems to cover his thoughts and ideas pretty thoroughly.... Oz Talk: Jordan Peterson’s Rules to Live By

Links

"The most important thing in investments is not having a high IQ, thank God. I mean, the important thing is realism and discipline. And you don’t need to be extraordinarily bright to do well in investments, if you are realistic and disciplined." --Warren Buffett

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway loosens policy on stock buybacks (LINK)

Related previous post: Warren Buffett on Share Repurchases

O’Shaughnessy Quarterly Investor Letter Q2 2018 (LINK)

Mindsets: Optimism vs. Complacency vs. Pessimism - by Morgan Housel (LINK) [This reminded me of Charlie Munger's labeling of himself as a "cheerful pessimist," as well as the story Bill Miller told about Warren Buffett in Miller's Q2 2008 letter.]

Short-selling legend Chanos says short Envision Healthcare (video) (LINK)

Top short seller Chanos' strategy for shorting stocks (video) (LINK)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the Recode Decode Podcast (LINK)

George Soros Bet Big on Liberal Democracy. Now He Fears He Is Losing. (LINK)

Why diagnosing Alzheimer’s today is so difficult—and how we can do better - By Bill Gates (LINK)

What Can Odd, Interesting Medical Case Studies Teach Us? - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Links

Why You Will See Bigger, Not Cheaper, Cable Bundles (LINK)

Grantham says capitalism is making climate change worse (LINK)

The World According to Boyar Podcast: Episode 4 with Larry Cunningham (LINK)

a16z Podcast: Tech Under Construction — Info Flows (LINK)

Crazy/Genius Podcast: Who Killed Local News? (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: General Chapman’s Last Stand (LINK)

American Innovations Podcast: Nuclear Energy | E = MC Squared | 1 (LINK)

Dan Harris: "Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics" | Talks at Google (LINK)

TED Talk: How to get empowered, not overpowered, by AI | Max Tegmark (LINK)

Related book: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 

The Search for Cancer Treatment That Is Personal and Useful - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

When the Next Plague Hits - by Ed Yong (LINK) [This long-form piece is also available via audio format, HERE.]

The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risk of pandemics continues to multiply. Much worse is coming. Is Donald Trump ready?

Links

"The notion of 'Keep Showing Up.' I wish I would have got that earlier, because I think it would have been easier to endure through some very difficult periods of time. I wish I would have learned that early in my business career.... I would have liked to have somebody tell me: 'Paul, keep showing up.'" --Paul Black [when asked about what life lesson he wished he'd have learned earlier in life, via the podcast below]

Capital Allocators Podcast: Paul Black - Gratitude, Fun, and Growth Stocks (LINK) [There is a great discussion on assessing company culture starting at the 17:50 mark, as well as a recommendation of the book The Culture Cycle. His example describing Whole Foods' culture as having an 'absence of fear' reminded me of some of Peter Kaufman's comments about the importance of trust—among businesses, relationships, and puppies.]

Mohnish Pabrai, Guy Spier and Raamdeo Agrawal interviewed by ET Now at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (video) (LINK)

Nobody Planned This, Nobody Expected It - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

“Principles for Success”: an ultra mini-series (about 30 minutes total) overview of Ray Dalio's ideas (LINK)

Tech’s Two Philosophies - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

a16z Podcast: The Case Against Education, From Signaling to Rainbow’s End (LINK)

Related book: The Case against Education

Surgical Checklists Save Lives — but Once in a While, They Don’t. Why? - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Ebola Returns Just as Trump Asks to Rescind Ebola Funds - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"When we look at the future of businesses, we look at riskiness as being sort of a go/no-go valve. In other words, if we think that we simply don't know what's going to happen in the future, that doesn't mean it's risky for everyone. It means we don't know - that it's risky for us. It may not be risky for someone else who understands the business. However, in that case, we just give up. We don't try to predict those things." --Warren Buffett (1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, via Outstanding Investor Digest)

Wall Street Heavies Fear a Beloved Gravy Train Is Nearing the End (LINK)

Don't Blame Jeff Immelt for GE's Stock Woes (LINK)

Bill Gates reviews “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund (LINK)

How Melinda Gates Is Tackling Tech's Gender Problem (Bloomberg's Decrypted Podcast) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Deep Basin – Earning Alpha in Energy (LINK)

After On Podcast: George Church | Bioengineering (LINK)

Related book: Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves  

Related link: Edge #464: The Augmented Human Being - A Conversation with George Church 

Can Doctors Choose Between Saving Lives and Saving a Fortune? - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Links

The Gates Foundation's 2017 Annual Letter from Bill and Melinda Gates (LINK)

Winning the Battle, Losing the War (LINK)

Inside Facebook's Two Years of Hell (LINK)

Amazon’s Latest Ambition? To Be a Major Hospital Supplier ($) (LINK)

How I Built This Podcast -- Dyson: James Dyson (LINK)

Related book: Against the Odds

Invest Like the Best Podcast: This is Who You Are Up Against, w/ Josh Wolfe (LINK)

A Doctor’s Painful Struggle With an Opioid-Addicted Patient - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Health Care Professionals Share Their Stories About Opioid-Addicted Patients (LINK)

The serendipity test [H/T @AdamMGrant] (LINK)

Book of the day (I've mentioned this before, but given the 13D Research piece on the current state of natural gas I linked to last week, I thought it was worth posting again. And if anyone has any other good recommendations on the industry, feel free to pass them along.): Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century - by Vaclav Smil 

Links

"History does not repeat itself in the same way each time, but certain trends and consequences are constants. If you do not know history, you think short term. If you know history, you think medium and long term." - Lee Kuan Yew (via Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World)

Mohnish Pabrai On The Irrelevance Of Buying Stock Outside Circle Of Competence And Realty Stocks (video) [H/T @VJ_Rabindranath] (LINK)

Outfoxed by Small-Batch Upstarts, Unilever Decides to Imitate Them (LINK)

In Israel, Teva has become more than just a drug company. But its future is now in question [H/T @CGrantWSJ] (LINK)

Pharma, under attack for drug prices, started an industry war (LINK)

My Father's Body, at Rest and in Motion - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

ABC News’ Dan Harris on Ambition, Mindfulness and Reaching Peace of Mind (LINK)

Related book: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

Ancient Infant's DNA Reveals New Clues to How the Americas Were Peopled - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"My favorite quote comes from a British author named Christopher Morley, 'There's only one success: to be able to live your life your way.' I believe you shouldn’t let society determine what your way is, and you shouldn’t let money determine what your way is." - Howard Marks (Source)

Howard Marks on CNBC (Video 1, Video 2)

The Bitcoin Boom: Asset, Currency, Commodity or Collectible? - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

How America’s pensions crisis could erode its ability to compete globally and exacerbate its domestic wealth divide (LINK)

Framing (LINK)

The Rules of the Doctor’s Heart - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

Is It Possible to Predict the Next Pandemic? - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Einstein's Note On Happiness, Given To Bellboy In 1922, Fetches $1.6 Million (LINK)

So on a piece of hotel stationery, Einstein wrote in German his theory of happiness: 

"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness." 

On a second sheet, he wrote another message: "Where there's a will there's a way."

Links

The Lessons of Leonardo: How to Be a Creative Genius - by Walter Isaacson (LINK)

Related book: Leonardo da Vinci

Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Master Your Priorities [H/T Kevin Rose] (LINK)

Howard Marks: Nobody knows what will happen (interview) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

Bias from Incentives and Reinforcement (LINK)

Stop Wasting Time - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

Will You Be Ready When the Stock Market Crashes Again? - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

A Half Dozen Lessons about the Right Burn Rate (Post Product/Market Fit in a Connected World) - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

How I Built This podcast -- Stonyfield Yogurt: Gary Hirshberg (LINK)

How the Feuding Kellogg Brothers Fought their Cereal Wars (podcast) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Related book: The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek

Grant's Podcast: Resources roundtable (LINK)

Jim Chanos on Bloomberg last week (video -- Chanos enters at the 24:30 mark) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, October 2017 (LINK)

Seth Godin: "You're doing it wrong" (LINK)

Author and NYU professor Scott Galloway on the Recode Decode podcast (from a couple of weeks ago) (LINK)

Related book (released tomorrow): The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): “Tell Me Something I Don't Know” on the topic of Behavior Change (LINK)

Desert Island Discs: Siddhartha Mukherjee (audio) (LINK)

Edge #500: Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination - A Conversation With Tim O'Reilly (LINK)

Related book: WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

Why T. Rex's Puny Arms Are a Sign of Strength (LINK)

Links

“It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.” ― Henry David Thoreau

Financial Market History: Reflections on the Past for Investors Today (December 2016) [H/T @chriswmayer] (LINK)

Saving Money and Running Backwards - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Dyson, the company that makes fancy vacuums, is building an electric car (LINK)

Grant's Podcast: The world is linked through arbitrage (LINK)

Superinvestors and the Art of Worldly Wisdom Podcast: Dale Wettlaufer on Value Investing in the 21st Century (LINK)

Can Heart Disease Shed Light on Cancer? - by Siddhartha Mukherjee (LINK)

TED Talk: The fascinating secret lives of giant clams | Mei Lin Neo (LINK)

‘This Is Like in War’: A Scramble to Care for Puerto Rico’s Sick and Injured (LINK)

Rescuing Puerto Rico's Monkey Island - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Earth Had Life From Its Infancy - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day: In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years

Links

Howard Marks at a CFA Society India event in Mumbai (video) [H/T @Sanjay__Bakshi] (LINK)

Jamie Dimon's 2016 Shareholder Letter (LINK)

GMO's Grantham: Stocks 'Decently Different This Time' (video) [H/T Barry Ritholtz] (LINK)

Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of Boston investment firm GMO, doesn't expect valuations to drop back to normal levels for two decades. But he is keeping cash on hand to take advantage of any dip, which he says would need to be 15-20% to act.

Horizon Kinetics: The Indexation That Is, Versus The Indexation That Should Be (LINK)

Jim O'Shaughnessy: "What Works on Wall Street" | Talks at Google (video) (LINK)

Schiff's Insurance Observer's February blog post (first post since 2009) --  The Big Fall: Greenberg Admits He Oversaw Sleazy Transactions [H/T @GnDsville] (LINK)

Meb Faber chats with Raoul Pal (podcast) (LINK)

How do winning consumer-goods companies capture growth? [H/T @Find_Me_Value] (LINK)

Toronto Home Prices Just Jumped Another 33% (video plays) [H/T Matt] (LINK)

New details on Amazon's move to shutter the company it bought for $545 million (video plays) [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, April 2017 (LINK)

Speech by Andrew Haldane: A little more conversation - A little less action (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter - April 2017: The truth about Brexit (LINK)

a16z Podcast: Cryptocurrencies, App Coins, and Investing in Protocols (LINK)

Siddhartha Mukherjee talks with Charlie Rose about his latest article, "A.I. Versus M.D." (video) (LINK) ["Genetic technology is A.I. I mean these two things are changing what human beings will be like in the future. There's no doubt about that, so it's something to know about; and particularly in medicine."]

Related book: The Gene

Get More Done By Working Less (LINK)

Related book: Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less 

Related video: Five Good Questions for Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Why Are Maker Schedules So Rare? (LINK)

Edge #490: Urban Evolution - A Conversation With Jonathan Losos (LINK)

Trees Have Their Own Songs - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Related book (just released): The Songs of Trees

Coastal Carolina football team goes to prison to learn a lesson (LINK)

Today's Audible Daily Deal ($3.95) is a book I've mentioned before: Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe - by Mike Massimino

Links

Business Blunder: Pancake Flipper Al Lapin Jr. & International Industries (IHOP) (LINK)

IP Capital (Brazil) with a discussion on Amazon in its Q3 report (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter, December 2016 (LINK)

Michael Hudson and Steve Keen discussing macro (Real Vision TV transcript) (LINK)

Macro Voices podcast -- Art Berman: OPEC Production Cut, Crude Oil Outlook (LINK)

An interesting podcast worth checking out: The Distance [H/T Aaron] (LINK)

The Distance is a podcast by Basecamp about longevity in business, featuring the stories of businesses that have endured for at least 25 years and the people who got them there.

Freakonomics Radio (podcast) -- Bad Medicine, Part 1: The Story of 98.6 (LINK)

We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by centuries of trial-and-error, and ask whether the new era of evidence-based medicine is the solution.

Brain Pickings -- Genes and the Holy G: Siddhartha Mukherjee on the Dark Cultural History of IQ and Why We Can’t Measure Intelligence (LINK)

Related book: The Gene: An Intimate History

It’s Personal: Five Scientists on the Heroes Who Changed Their Lives (LINK)

World's Largest Cluster of Sinkholes Discovered (LINK)

Seneca on Cato: the best quotes (LINK)