Episode 4: The Mafia of Extinct Countries


Welcome to the episode with our possibly most tantalizing title yet! We read some great books this week:

Our in-depth book recap today is An Atlas of Extinct Countries by Gideon Defoe, which you may recognize from our previous episodes: Think You Have Atomic Habits? Think Again, A Minute to Finish, and I Will Teach You to Heist.

Think Again – Adam Grant

What book’s about – reevaluating everything you think to avoid pitfalls and blind spots

If I (Andrew) had to describe Chapter 2 in once sentence, it’d be this- You need to be confident AND humble, not overly confident without humility or humble without confidence.

Other episodes ft. this book: Think You Have Atomic Habits? Think Again.

The Bomber Mafia – Malcolm Gladwell

The story continues!!! 

The Americans want to make war strategic and less bloody, but the Brits are unconvinced.  They are run by a heartless psychopath (not Churchill, don’t @ me) 

I (Julianne ) feel like I’m about to be heartbroken but I’m here for the drama.

Other episodes where I discuss The Bomber Mafia: I Will Teach You to Heist

Dune – Frank Herbert

What book’s about – it’s a sci-fi book about a boy who is destined for great things. Julianne got it for me (Andrew) in an airport bookstore in Hawaii. I’ve heard that it’s arguably the greatest sci-fi novel of all time.

Clockwork – Mike Michalowicz

This book is really good.  This is good because I (Julianne) bought it on a whim- my friend Molly was starting it and it sounded good and I was like, “Wanna read it together???”  She’s probably finished it by now, I don’t know, but I’m still plugging away at it and enjoying myself immensely!

I’ve had 2 takeaways that were worth the price of admission so far: 

1) Your time needs to be divided between doing, deciding, delegating, and dreaming- and you need to spend about 80% of your time doing.  That was really helpful for me because I often feel like I should be more visionary but I really like getting things done- and it turns out, that’s a big part of where I should be living.

2) He has some really good tips on documenting your systems so that anyone can take over for you, if necessary.  

I think one of the reasons this book is resonating with me so much is that, even though I’m not an entrepreneur, I’ve kinda run my department on my own long enough that I have a lot of the same problems as a company founder!  Lol  No one knows how to do all the things I do or how those fit into a cohesive whole, but I have to be able to hand those things off to someone if I want to be able to keep up with our company as it grows.  Or, you know, take a long vacation or something.

Book Recap: An Atlas of Extinct Countries

This is probably my (Julianne’s) favorite slide presentation I’ve done to date. I’ve really enjoyed reading this book, and I’m glad I own it so I can return to it whenever I need a laugh!

You can watch the *actual* presentation on Youtube.

Here’s the slideshow:

Recent Posts