Deep Questions with Cal Newport Ep 384: What Should I Read for a Deeper New Year?
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Dec 22, 2025 In this engaging conversation, Cal Newport recommends six transformative books that defy the self-help genre. He delves into Thoreau's Walden as a model for intentional living and discusses Lincoln's moral intelligence derived from literature. The impact of technology on our brains is explored through Nicholas Carr's work, while Richard Rohr's insights on life's hardships offer profound wisdom. Newport also tackles listener questions about parenting in a tech-saturated world and offers strategies for managing multiple creative pursuits.
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Design Your Life By Experimentation
- Walden models lifestyle-centric planning: define the life you want then run experiments to reach it.
- Thoreau measured a survival baseline to add only chosen extras without costly traps.
Moral Intelligence Is Practiced, Not Given
- Lincoln's Virtues shows moral intelligence is developed through reading, encounters, and organizing thought.
- Cal argues sharpening moral intuitions by thinking and producing speeches powered Lincoln's moral imagination.
Approach Religion As Practice, Not Proposition
- Karen Armstrong argues modern, Enlightenment-shaped minds misread religion's pre-modern modalities.
- She recommends approaching religion as embodied practice that yields intimations via ritual and action.