Top Podcasts of the Week

Below is our “Top Podcast” episode with our new curator, Colby Donovan! Holler with any feedback!

Today we have an episode on investing in farmland, an NBA player who is trying to tokenize his contract, a discussion on the 10,000 hour rule and why it may be flawed, and a conversation with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman.

Business

• Capital Allocators: Jay Girotto — Farmland Opportunity. Girotto is the President of Farmland Opportunity, a $400 million investment manager that provides direct ownership of productive row crop farmland in the U.S. He explains how he began a unique career as a farmland investor, why the asset class was attractive to him (uncorrelated returns and a great inflation hedge), and what they look for in acquisitions, including specific geographies, which surprisingly includes Minnesota. [October 14, 2019–38 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast |Breaker | Website Link

• Off the Chain: Spencer Dinwiddie, Professional NBA Player: Fighting the NBA for the Right to Tokenize a Contract. Dinwiddie is a point guard for the Brooklyn Nets and joins Pomp to discuss the fascinating idea of tokenizing his contract. The first 25 minutes of the episode are about his childhood, attending Colorado and entering the NBA draft. Then they jump into how he became aware of crypto, where the idea of tokenizing his contract came from, and the general explanation of what tokenizing his contract actually means (here’s a good article on the idea too). He explains his disappointment in the NBA’s dislike of the idea, and then at the 51 minute mark he finishes the episode with ideas on the recent tiff between the NBA and China. [October 17, 2019–1 hour, 11 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast |Breaker | Website Link

The Rest

• The Next Big Idea: Malcolm Gladwell and David Epstein on the Keys to Success. Gladwell is the best-selling author and heavily credited with the wide-spread knowledge of the 10,000 hour rule, which Epstein argues has some holes in his newest book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World. The episode is a conversation between the two of them (similar to the one they had a few years ago at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference) and they go back and forth on some of the ideas in Epsteins’ book. They cover the difference between Tiger Woods and Roger Federer’s upbringing and why it worked for each of them, why intense specialization only works in what Epstein calls “kind” learning environments where someone gets a lot of immediate feedback, and provide tips to improve your learning process: testing, interweaving, and spacing. [October 15, 2019–48 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast |Breaker | Website Link

• The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish: #68 Daniel Kahneman: Putting Your Intuition on Ice. This is my favorite episode that Kahneman has been a guest on. Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman is known as one of the founding fathers of behavioral economics. They cover a lot in the episode — what is true happiness is, what steps we can take to improve our decision-making and overcome our biases, and the idea of noise in decision making, which is the topic of his next book. [October 19, 2019–1 hour, 6 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast |Breaker | Website Link

RECOMMENDATIONS 

Books

• Adam Symsom (CEO, E.W. Scripps Company): 1) The Boys in the Boa by Daniel Brown — Really good lessons on servant-leadership.

• Vitaliy Katsenelson (Chief Investment Officer, Investment Management Associates):1)The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson — helped him redefine his values. The book says that when you set your values, you want them to be process based and within your control. 2)The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder — This is the authorized biography of Buffett. His biggest takeaway was Buffett’s huge regret is that he didn’t spend enough time with his kids when they were growing up. 3)The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett — The book is a compilation of Buffett’s annual reports and where you should start if you want to get into value investing 4) Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb — one of the most important books on understanding risk (Katsenelson also suggests all of Taleb’s books) 5)Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell, 6)The Art of the Good Life by Rolf Dobelli — The book improved his life tremendously and helped him lose 30 pounds.

• Binyamin Applebaum (Business and Economics Writer, New York Times): 1)The Wheels of Commerce by Fernand Braudel — First of a three part series on history of Europe’s rise into the modern era; fascinating books that integrate economics and history.

• Fran Kinniry (Senior Investment Strategist, The Vanguard Group): 1) Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb, 2)Judgment Under Uncertainty by Daniel Kahneman, 3)Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

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Here’s ours:

The Best Investment Writing Volume 3: Gary Antonacci – Extended Backtest of Global Equities Momentum

Episode #182: Larry Hite, “I Want To Be In A Position Where Something Great Can Happen…If I Don’t Get That, I Don’t Want To Play”

Good investing,Meb Fabertheideafarm.com