Showing results by narrator "Rene Ruiz" in All Categories

You want to make better decisions. You want to be right more of the time professionally and personally. However, being more right consistently is a hard problem because the world is such a complex, evolving place. How do you navigate this complexity? Mental models are decision-making tools that guide our perception of the world and our behaviour in it. They help us understand life, make decisions and solve problems. The best models help us make intelligent investments, develop groundbreaking technologies and even travel to outer space.

In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, now revised with added material and new insights, Nhat Hanh introduces us to the core teachings of Buddhism and shows us that the Buddha’s teachings are accessible and applicable to our daily lives.

The book introduces us to an incredible, essential, and oft-overlooked kingdom of life - fungi - and all the potential it holds for our future, through the work and research being done by an unforgettable community of mushroom-mad citizen scientists and microbe devotees. This entertaining and mind-expanding journey will captivate listeners who are curious about the hidden worlds and networks that make up our planet.

We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. This major shift is based on simple mathematics, some of which goes back centuries: linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of eighteenth-century mathematics. Indeed by the mid-1850s, a lot of the groundwork was all done. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggests that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules.

Tired of misalignment, friction, and stalled workflow? Flow Engineering is a practical guide to using value stream mapping techniques to align teams, unlock innovation, and optimize performance. Based on foundations from Value Stream Mapping, cybernetics, and the Toyota Production System, Flow Engineering's lightweight and iterative practices build the value, clarity, and flow required for effective collaboration and collective action.

We have hundreds of conversations every week, offline, online and even in our heads. But have you ever stopped to think about the words you use? The way we describe ourselves and the world around us shapes our decisions, emotions and actions. Offering practical guidance based on the latest psychology and neuroscience, this witty and intelligent book urges us to be open to the possibility of our own fallibility. By embracing conversations as a tool for growth, we can learn to communicate better with others and, most crucially, ourselves, giving us a more rewarding and successful life.

Clive Thompson’s Coders is a delightful place to begin to understand this vocation, which is both a profession and a way of life and which essentially didn’t exist little more than a generation ago, but now is considered just about the only safe bet we can make about what the future holds. Thompson takes us close to some of the great coders of our time and unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the first great coders, who were women.

Pizza and Taco are serving up more awesomeness with a cool new club! They can't wait to talk about all their favorite interests...including making comic books. Lots of people signed up, so they know it's going to be popular! Then why does everyone go to Cheeseburger's video game club instead?! Pizza and Taco have no choice but to check it out. They just might learn that kids want to make comics just as much as they want to play video games!

With stories that entertain as much as they inform, renowned evolutionist David Sloan Wilson outlines the basic principles of evolution and shows how, when properly understood, they can illuminate the length and breadth of creation, from the origin of life to the nature of religion.

Poor Duncan just wants to color. But when he opens his box of crayons, he finds only letters, all saying the same thing: His crayons have had enough! They quit! Beige Crayon is tired of playing second fiddle to Brown Crayon. Black wants to be used for more than just outlining. Blue needs a break from coloring all those bodies of water. And Orange and Yellow are no longer speaking — each believes he is the true color of the sun.

Aaron and Grace Templeton will never forget the 1998 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The day their daughter Kiera got lost in the crowd. Investigative journalist Miren Triggs has spent years trying to help the Templetons find her. But with no leads, Miren fears there's nothing more she can do. Until Kiera's 8th birthday, when a video arrives showing Kiera alive and well, playing in a bedroom. Miren can't believe it - finally, a lead she can follow. Until another video arrives. It's the same bedroom. But Kiera is gone.

Do you have a dream you must pursue, but everyone says it's unrealistic? Or that you're not qualified? Too old, too out of shape? Or you don't have the "right experience?" Glenn Damato was a 41-year-old software instructor who sought to exceed the bounds of his comfortable but humdrum existence. He embarked on an adventure for which he was miserably unprepared. Why did he do this? How did he answer the ancient human question: how do we jump-start growth in our lives? We become something we were not.

The path to success is rarely easy or direct, and good mentors are hard to find. In Getting There, 30 leaders in diverse fields share their secrets to navigating the rocky road to the top. In an honest, direct, and engaging way, these role models describe the obstacles they faced, the setbacks they endured, and the vital lessons they learned. Getting There is for everyone - from students contemplating their futures to the vast majority of us facing challenges or seeking to reach our potential.

In the dusty hills above San Diego, Bob Larsen became America's greatest running coach. Starting with a ragtag group of high school cross country and track runners, Larsen set out on a decades-long quest to find the secret of running impossibly fast, for longer distances than anyone thought possible. Running to the Edge is a riveting account of Larsen's journey, and his quest to discover the unorthodox training secrets that would lead American runners (elite and recreational) to breakthroughs never imagined.

Twice a year in the heart of Silicon Valley, a small investment firm called Y Combinator selects an elite group of young entrepreneurs from around the world for three months of intense work and instruction. Their brand-new two- or three-person start-ups are given a seemingly impossible challenge: to turn a raw idea into a viable business, fast.

A hidden set of rules governs who owns what - explaining everything from whether you can recline your airplane seat to why HBO lets you borrow a password illegally - and in this lively and entertaining guide, two acclaimed law professors reveal how things become 'mine'. Mine is one of the first words babies learn. By the time we grow up, the idea of ownership seems natural, whether buying a cup of coffee or a house.

It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly - to everything associated with the words “human,” “culture,” and “policy.”

There is a way to confront problems in life, shake them off, and move on. Based on the story (see Acts 27-28) of the Apostle Paul's near catastrophic shipwreck, this is a call to individuals to "shake off" problems and disasters in life and move forward to new health and wholeness. To everyone on the ship with the Apostle Paul, it looked like a certain disaster. But as Paul predicted, everyone did survive - even though they made it to safety only by grasping "broken pieces of wood."

Ben Mattlin's wife, ML, recalls falling in love with his confidence and sheer determination. On one of their earliest dates, he persuaded her to ride on his lap in his wheelchair on their way home from an Elvis Costello concert. Thirty years later, they still travel like this from time to time, undaunted by the curious stares following them down the street. But In Sickness and in Health is more than an "inspiring" story of how a man born with spinal muscular atrophy

Wings of War is the incredible true story of the P-51 Mustang fighter and the unlikely crew of designers, engineers, test pilots, and army officers who brought it from the drafting table to the skies over World War II. This is hardly a straightforward tale of building an airplane—for years, the team was stymied by corruption within the defense industry and stonewalled by the Army Air Forces, who failed to understand the Mustang’s potential.