“Be yourself” is one of those phrases that often comes from a good place, but rarely feels useful. Which self do you mean exactly?

I have a lot of different selves. There’s the work me. The friend-group me. The hanging-on-the-couch-with-my-wife me. None of them are fake; they just have slightly different job descriptions.

So when someone says “be yourself,” I take that to mean “be your best self,” which usually makes me feel like I’m already failing.

Then I came across a line that flipped my viewpoint on the whole thing:

“Go be your favorite self.”

That’s so much easier to understand. Your favorite self isn’t perfect; it’s just the version of you that you actually like being the most. For me, that means being loose, curious, and willing to say silly things to break the tension. That’s my favorite version of Kyle.

So when someone says, “Be yourself", take that to be the self you’d choose on purpose. The one that feels most honest. Not because you think others will be impressed by it, but because you enjoy it.

"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."

I find it borderline criminal how little we’re taught about Frederick Douglass in school. The man should be mentioned in the same breath as Lincoln, not buried in a quick paragraph during Black History Month.

Not only did this dude escape slavery, he then taught himself to read (with the help of his slave owner’s empathetic mistress), became a master of language, and transformed himself into the baddest orator and writer of the 19th century. He basically built the American Dream before it existed.

What makes Blight’s biography so great is how it captures Douglass as a true strategist. Early in his rise, Douglass teamed up with famed white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who preached non-violence and abstaining from politics. But Douglass wasn’t afraid to evolve. He realized that moral purity without political power was a dead end. He broke away, started his own newspaper, and became an independent man who could debate anyone into submission.

Blight also shows how electric Douglass was as a speaker. He was a true performer — a combo of Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Pryor, and Shakespeare. One minute he had crowds weeping at the horrors of slavery, the next he had them laughing with impressions of slave owners.

Fair warning: this book is dense. It’s 900 pages of high-protein history and each page feels like you really earned it.

In a now-viral 2020 email to the founders of Facebook, the Silicon Valley billionaire predicted the rise of socialism. “When 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist,” wrote Thiel, “we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.”

Some of my favorite quotes:

The passage below is from a poem called The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité, written nearly 100 years ago in 1922. It was designed to demonstrate the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

If you can correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

As I get older, finding quality time with the people I love feels harder to come by. I’m fortunate enough to see my family and friends a lot, but most conversations last about three minutes before someone’s baby cries, a toddler melts down, dinner comes out, or something big happens on TV. So instead of relying on the classic, “What else is going on?” I’ve been trying (albeit clumsily) to squeeze a little more juice out of those quick catch-ups.

Here are a few of my favorites:

*I know, they sound weird as shit, but 9 times out of 10, people light up when you ask them:

For some reason, people come to me for advice whenever they have knee, back, or hip issues. I don’t know what that says about me, but I appreciate that my opinions on the subject are valued, I guess. As much as my knowledge comes from personal experience, the overwhelming majority of my information stems from these two guys — Tim Ferriss and Ben Patrick, better known as “Kneesovertoesguy” (@kneesovertoesguy).

Simply put, these guys have kept my body healthy, despite two knee surgeries and decades of contact sports. I don’t remember how I first came across Ben Patrick, but it was before he blew up. In fact, I even DM’ed back and forth with him for a bit, and he sent me free PDFs of his various “Knee Ability” programs. Sticking to his program of 3-5 exercises (all of which take less than 10 mins/day), I cured all of my movement ails.

Whenever anyone approaches me about knee surgery, knee pain, ankle issues, back tightness, etc, I send them to Ben’s page. His mission is simple: to democratize pain-free movement by making tools, systems, and education accessible to everyone. If you need more of an endorsement, I can now squat with my ass to the grass, sit on my heels for long periods of time, and still jump and sprint at the same level (if not better) than I could ten years ago.

He was just featured on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, but if you’re looking for answers, this 45-minute video below has everything you need to know to start moving like a teenager.

My favorite knee-saving exercises are as follows. Aim for 2 sets of 10-15 reps a few times per week:

Keith and Kyle sit down to discuss the life of Frantz Schmidt, a sixteenth-century executioner in ⁠Nuremberg, Germany⁠. Based on Schmidt's unique journal, the book explores his public role in executing and punishing people, his private struggles with his profession and religious faith, and his attempt to gain honor and avoid the social stigma of being an executioner.  A rare, detailed look into the era's criminal justice, social customs, and even medical practices, challenging the common perception of executioners as monsters. 

📚 Books discussed in this episode:

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Thanks for reading!