Holiday Book Recommendations from Bill Gates

What an entertaining way to watch a couple of book recommendations for the holidays! I started the video and was mesmerized. Let's appreciate the format of this video for a bit. Bill talks about these books and what he likes about them in a very casual way. But seeing his words being picked up in the animation is really fun. What if an AI can do this for every one of us soon? What a nice way to add another dimension to audio content.

The books he highlights are Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie, The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee and Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil, as well as an online economics lectures by Timothy Taylor and his Spotify Holiday Playlist.

I know Vaclav Smil from the coverage of his book How the World Really Works over at A Few Things, for example here. He is one of Gates' favorite analysts and authors who wrote 36 books. I remember Siddhartha Mukherjee from the conversation with Sam Harris about Genetics, Cancer and the Pandemic (all these links include the full episodes). I've not heard from Hannah Ritchie but I'm looking forward to learning more about her.