Hey, this is the last time we're recording before Christmas, which means it's everyone's favorite time of the year in the Deep Questions podcast, our holiday episode.

This is when we let you, the listeners, and viewers take over the show.

So we're going to do a deep dive on the question that I probably am asked the most by you,

which is, what should I read?

We're going to take a little bit of a twist here.

What I'm going to do is talk about six books I pulled from my shelves that has what I

think is deep wisdom for making your new year deeper,

but none of them are self-help or advice books.

So these are books that were not intended for you to help you improve your life, but nonetheless

can help you make massive, positive changes in your life as we head to the new year.

Then we're going to open up the phone lines and we have your calls one after another. I haven't heard any of these in advance. I don't know if you're upset or angry or mad or have deep questions or small questions. We're going to get into it all because it is the holiday episode and you are in charge. All right. So I don't want to waste any more time.

As always, I'm Cal Newport.

And this is Deep Questions.

Today's episode,

what should I read to start 2025 off right? And we'll get into all of that right after the music.

Okay. right after the music. All right. So, here's our plan for this deep dive. I literally just went through my book shelves.

I have to pluralize that because I have many shelves and many libraries.

But I went to various locations in which I have many bookshelves.

And I pulled six books off the shelf that I all think have played an important role in my own development

and my own quest for deep life. I don't want to briefly talk about each. I didn't know how to

organize these, so I decided I would just do them in publication order from the oldest to the newest.

I want to emphasize, I don't like superlatives. I'm not good at saying like here are the five best

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