The shelf
Take a book down and watch it.
Every series is built from one book. Each episode runs about two minutes, opens on the problem rather than the summary, and is written in the author’s own voice so it can be read aloud.
2 series · 15 episodes · 25m 02s of material
- 01Three Puffy RollsI arrived in Philadelphia at seventeen with a Dutch dollar and a shilling in copper, wearing the dirtiest clothes I owned, because my good ones were coming round by sea. I was hungry. I went into a baker's and asked for three-penny worth of anything he had.1m 50s
- 02How I Ate Rice and Bought BooksAt sixteen I read a book by a man named Tryon recommending a vegetable diet, and I determined to go into it. Everyone around me found this irritating and I was frequently chid for my singularity. But I had not taken it up for my health, and not for my conscience either.1m 55s
- 03Call It an ErratumI was a printer by trade, and printers have a particular word for the mistakes that survive into a finished book. We call them errata. When I came to write the account of my own life, I deliberately used that same shop word for the things I had done wrong.1m 44s
- 04Write the Rules, Not the Guest ListIn 1727 I gathered most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club for mutual improvement. We called it the Junto and we met on Friday evenings. It ran in one form or another for forty years, and very nearly everything I built in Philadelphia began in that room.1m 44s
- 05Fifty Subscribers at Forty ShillingsThere was no good bookseller in Philadelphia and books came dear from England. I wanted to read a great deal more than I could afford to own, and so did every man in the Junto. The obvious answer was to get rich enough to buy books. I did something else instead.1m 47s
- 06Put Yourself Out of SightWhen I first went round proposing the library, my applications were often refused, and I began to notice the reason. People do not resist a good project nearly so much as they resist the man who appears to want the credit for it. So I took myself out of the proposal.1m 50s
- 07I Stopped Saying CertainlyI was a fierce arguer as a young man and tolerably good at it. I won a great many disputes and persuaded almost nobody. Around the time I began the project of my own improvement I gave up the habit of speaking with certainty, and I never took it up again.1m 52s
- 08Thirteen VirtuesYou want to become a better person. Most people wish for it, and stop at the wishing. I tried to engineer it. At twenty years of age, with little money and less schooling, I conceived a bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. Not a sermon. A system.1m 57s
- 01It Has a NameYou have a thing you are supposed to be doing. You are not doing it. You have explained this to yourself as laziness, or bad timing, or not being ready. I want to take all of that away from you and give you one word instead.1m 34s
- 02It Is Not PersonalIt feels like it is aimed at you. It arrives exactly when you sit down. It finds the precise excuse you cannot argue with. It seems to know you. I am telling you it does not know you at all.1m 26s
- 03Follow the FearThere is a piece of work you keep circling and never begin. Every time you get near it something in you goes cold. You have read that as a warning. I want to argue it is the opposite of a warning.1m 29s
- 04Self-Doubt Is EvidenceYou keep asking whether you are really a writer. Really a founder. Really an artist. You take the question itself as the answer, and the answer you hear is no. You have that exactly backwards.1m 24s
- 05Turning ProThere is a difference between the person who does this seriously and the person who does not, and it is not talent. I want to be precise about what it actually is, because the usual explanations are flattering and wrong.1m 34s
- 06Nothing Else MattersPeople ask me about inspiration, about where ideas come from, about how to know when something is ready. I have stressed professionalism so heavily for a reason, and here it is, plainly.1m 28s
- 07Territory, Not HierarchyYou keep checking how you are doing relative to other people. Where you rank. Who is ahead. I want to show you why that particular habit will drain you no matter how well you place.1m 28s
Episode scripts are written from the source book and read in a synthesised voice. They are a study aid, not a substitute for the book.