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