It's time for another episode of Cortex Book Club.

This time, we're doing How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Why did we choose this book?

I just feel like this is the most famous...

I don't want to say like productivity book, but it's like, it's the most famous book of this kind, like businessy self-help.

Yeah. It has an underlying current of getting things done and accomplished, but it's in a social

setting. Yeah. It's not pure self-help because it is very business focused, even though it's not

exactly like a business book my memory of it

was like this is like one of the foundational texts in this genre and also i think it is a book

that has somehow transcended its own title like people know this phrasing of like how to win friends

and influence people i think even if they don't know that it's a book, like if you make a joke and you structure it with something with that title, people will recognize this as like a meme that's in the world. So that's why I think we went with it. I think this book is basically like a household name even if people haven't read it.

Similarly, seven habits is one of those too.

Exactly.

But how to win friends and influence people was published in 1936, which is just wild.

And like it really was, it kind of is the prototypical self-help business book.

There wasn't a lot before this. And I think the success

of this book, written by Dale Carnegie, I think really gets us to where we are now. And it's funny,

in reading the book, there are a lot of things where you're like, yeah, of course, or yeah,

I've heard about this before. And then you have to kind of like reframe it, be like, oh no, this is probably the first time I didn't ever said this.

Like, this is the first time somebody published this is an idea as to how you should live your

life or live your business life in some way. So like looking at kind of like the pantheon of book club of Book Club episodes, this to me felt like a missing spot that I wanted to fill in. And I will say,

I'm very happy we did, because I'll, like, spoil it now. This is my favorite book that we've read.

...