This afternoon I got some amazing news from my co-author: our book, The Book of Why, was mentioned in a new documentary series on Netflix! It’s in a show called “Inside Bill’s Brain.” If you watch the first episode, about 21 minutes in you’ll see Bill Gates’ assistant loading up his book bag with books for him to read on this next trip. She reads off the titles one by one as she puts them in: “… How to Make a Mind, Fundamentals of Deep Learning, Quantum Mechanics and Algorithms, The Book of Why, …”
Holy cow, we made it into Bill’s Book Bag! I propose this as a new literary award to go along with Oprah’s Book Club. Unfortunately, I have no clue as to whether he actually liked our book, but it’s pretty certain that he read it. The assistant explains that he takes his reading very seriously. It’s not unusual for him to read 14 books in a week, and he probably will read every one of those books on his trip. One of his friends says that he reads 150 pages an hour, with “90 percent” retention.
Here’s another thought: We spent three years writing a book, just to get three hours of Bill Gates’ attention. I hope it was worth it!
In other news, Netflix is also now showing the History Channel program that I was interviewed for about ten years ago, called “The Universe.” So if 2 seconds of seeing my book on camera wasn’t enough for you, check out that program and in particular the episodes called “The Moon” and “The Day the Moon was Gone.”
In chess news, I’m sorry to report that Jeffery Xiong was eliminated from the World Cup in the round of eight by Teimour Radjabov. But the game he lost was a terrific, hard-fought game. I think that everyone in American chess can feel proud of him and look forward to more triumphs in his future. For sure he will get invited to more top-level tournaments.
That’s all for today!
