Billy Oppenheimer — On Curiosity, Creativity & Conceptual Ancestors (EP.158)

Billy Oppenheimer is a researcher for Ryan Holiday. He is also known for his viral long-form tweets and Six at 6 on Sunday newsletter. Billy is insatiably curious. He is a master at drawing lessons from anecdotes from the worlds of sports, music, comedy, business, and more. He joins the show to discuss how to cultivate good taste, whether everything is a remix, why he learns through introjection, and a whole lot more. Important Links:

• Six at 6 on Sunday
• Billy’s Twitter
• Billy’s website
• Our episodes with David Senra (1, 2)
• 'A Bicycle of the Mind' - Steve Jobs on the Computer
• Our episode with Edward Rooster
• To His Coy Mistress; by Andrew Marvell
• Kubla Khan; by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Show Notes:

• Focus on doing the thing
• SIX at 6’s origin story
• Learning through introjection
• Developing taste & cultivating curiosity
• “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people”
• How Billy practices his scales
• Fiction vs non-fiction
• Repetition, repetition, repetition
• Should we study more failures?
• Process compounds
• “Care, but don’t care too much”
• Has anyone succeeded without persistence?
• Conceptual ancestors
• Everything’s a remix
• Taste, tools, markets & feedback
• Finding your pain points
• MUCH more!

Books Mentioned:

• Trust Me, I'm Lying; by Ryan Holiday
• Psychology of Money; by Morgan Housel
• Atomic Habits; by James Clear
• The Immortality Key : The Secret History of the Religion with No Name; by Brian C. Muraresku
• Reality Hunger; by David Shields
• The Power of Myth; by Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers
• Cloud Atlas; by David Mitchell
• The Great Gatsby; by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Da Vinci Code; by Dan Brown