Andrew Ross Sorkin is a financial columnist for The New York Times and the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook, an online daily financial report published by the same. Andrew is also an assistant editor of business and finance news at the NYT, helping guide and shape the paper’s coverage. He is a co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC’s signature morning program, and he is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, which chronicled the events of the 2008 financial crisis. The book won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book and was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize and the 2010 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. Andrew co-produced the film adaptation of the book, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. He began writing for The New York Times in 1995 under unusual circumstances: He hadn’t yet graduated from high school.
If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say?
“Things are never as good or as bad as they seem.”
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?
Earplugs for sleeping. I’ve tried them all. Hearos Xtreme Protection NRR 33 work best and are the most comfortable. If you really want to go to extremes to also control light, Lonfrote Deep Molded Sleep Mask is the best for airplanes or anywhere else.
Yoga, and the community I came to know through my practice, saved my life.
Anna Holmes is an award-winning writer and editor who has worked with numerous publications, including The Washington Post, The New Yorker online, and The New York Times, where she is a regular contributor to the Sunday Book Review. In 2007, in response to her work for magazines like Glamour and Cosmopolitan, she created the popular website Jezebel.com, which helped to revolutionize popular discussions around the intersections of gender, race, and culture. In 2016, she became SVP of Editorial at First Look Media, where she is spearheading the launch of Topic.com, the consumer-facing arm of Topic, the company’s film, TV, and digital studio.
What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?
They should ignore any advice from anyone who purports to tell them what the future will look like. No one knows. People have ideas, and those are good to take on board and consider, but that’s about the extent of it. I can’t tell you how many media or political “experts” have made proclamations as to the next big thing in journalism or entertainment—or politics—and been proven horribly, embarrassingly wrong. In the whole scheme of things, no one knows anything, or rather, all of us have a lot to learn, and it takes a lifetime. Interrogate the information shared with you by others, and use it as a way to make up your own mind, not a path to follow.
Don’t believe anyone who tells you they know what they are doing. William Goldman, the screenwriter, once wrote “nobody knows anything” in the movie business, and it is true. I know I don’t.
Ben Stiller has written, starred in, directed, or produced more than 50 films, including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Zoolander, The Cable Guy, There’s Something About Mary, the Meet the Parents trilogy, DodgeBall, Tropic Thunder, the Madagascar series, and the Night at the Museum trilogy. He is a member of a group of comedic actors colloquially known as the Frat Pack. His films have grossed more than $2.6 billion in Canada and the United States, with an average of $79 million per film. Throughout his career, he has received multiple awards and honors, including an Emmy Award, multiple MTV Movie Awards, and a Teen Choice Award.
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
I have a lot of unusual habits that I don’t think I should go into here. I love stopping on the side of the road whenever I see a historical marker and reading the whole thing, and then sometimes exploring the site. While not absurd, I can sometimes go down the rabbit hole of this kind of thing and take big detours from my schedule.
I like to dunk my head in a bucket of ice in the morning to wake me up. I don’t think it actually is therapeutic but it is definitely invigorating and probably absurd looking.
Be a good wife/husband/mom/dad/friend. Look at Paul Newman’s life. Do that.
Joel McHale is best known as host of E!’s The Soup and for his starring role on the hit comedy series Community. His film credits include A Merry Friggin’ Christmas, Deliver Us from Evil, Blended, Ted, What’s Your Number?, The Big Year, Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World, and The Informant! Joel also performs standup comedy around the country to sold-out audiences. In 2014, he hosted the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, D.C., and hosted the 2015 ESPYs on ABC. Born in Rome and raised in Seattle, Joel was a history major at the University of Washington, where he also was a member of their championship football team. He received his master of fine arts from UW’s Professional Actor Training Program. He is the author of Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
Because this question is so big, Tim (I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this), I’m going to list five, you jerk. I’m not going to even recommend my book: Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be … because that would seem arrogant. In stores now!
Amelia Boone is a four-time world champion in the sport of obstacle course racing (OCR) and is widely considered the world’s most decorated obstacle racer. She has been called “the Michael Jordan of obstacle racing” and “the Queen of Pain.” Her victories include winning the 2013 Spartan Race World Championships and being the only three-time winner of the World’s Toughest Mudder. In the 2012 World’s Toughest Mudder competition, which lasts 24 hours (she covered 90 miles and ~300 obstacles), she finished second overall out of more than 1,000 competitors, 80 percent of whom were male. The one person who beat her finished just eight minutes ahead of her. Amelia is also a three-time finisher of the Death Race, a competitive ultra-marathoner, and has risen to the top of her sport while simultaneously working as a full-time corporate attorney. She has been selected as one of the “50 Fittest Women” by Sports Illustrated.
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?
During a tough period in my life, I purchased a handmade wrap bracelet on Etsy inscribed with the quote “The struggle ends when the gratitude begins.” [Quote attributed to Neale Donald Walsch] I wear it on my wrist every day as a constant reminder to myself to live in a place of gratitude.
Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: “What? You too? I thought I was the only one. –C.S. Lewis
Aniela Gregorek came to the United States with her husband, Jerzy Gregorek, in 1986 as a political refugee during the persecution of the Polish Solidarity Movement. As a professional athlete, Aniela has won five World Weightlifting Championships and established six world records. In 2000, she and Jerzy founded the UCLA weightlifting team and became its head coaches. Aniela has an MFA degree in creative writing from Norwich University. She writes and translates poetry both from Polish to English and from English to Polish. Her poetry and translations have appeared in major poetry magazines. As co-creator of the Happy Body Program, Aniela has mentored people for more than 30 years. She is the co-author of The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise, and Relaxation.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
The one book that I’ve read and keep rereading is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It’s marked up with my thoughts, feelings, and comments. It is a book I have gifted to many people because it changed the way I think about human suffering and grace in life.
Jerzy Gregorek emigrated from Poland to the United States as a political refugee with his wife, Aniela, in 1986. He subsequently won four World Weightlifting Championships and established one world record. In 2000, Jerzy and Aniela founded UCLA’s weightlifting team. As co-creator of the Happy Body program, Jerzy has mentored people for more than 30 years. In 1998, Jerzy earned an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including The American Poetry Review. His poem “Family Tree” was the winner of Amelia magazine’s Charles William Duke Long Poem Award in 1998.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
After I read this question, I raised my head and looked at the hundreds of books in my study, then I walked to my living room and looked at more books there, and then I looked at the piles in my bedroom, the kitchen, my gym, and my meditation room. I had a strong feeling that almost all of them contributed to the person I have become.
One book I’ve returned to throughout my life, so much so that it’s now filled with underlining and notes, is The Doctor and the Soul by Viktor E. Frankl. A psychiatrist who emerged alive after six years in a concentration camp, Frankl’s work is based on our search for meaning in life as a very personal task. This book helped me embrace hard choices and keep imagining a better future.
We may be approaching a time when sugar is responsible for more early deaths in America than cigarette smoking.
Lewis Cantley has made significant advances in cancer research, stemming from his discovery of the signaling pathway phosphoinositide 3-kinase (P13K). His pioneering research has resulted in revolutionary treatments for cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases. He is the author of more than 400 original papers and more than 50 book chapters and review articles. He conducted his postdoctoral research at Harvard University, where he became an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. He later became a professor of physiology at Tufts University, but returned to Harvard Medical School as a professor of cell biology. He became chief of Harvard’s new Division of Signal Transduction, and a founding member of its Department of Systems Biology, in 2002.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
I read fairly widely, but particularly enjoy and give or recommend to my friends and family books written by three contemporary writers: Richard Rhodes, Neal Stephenson, and Philip Kerr.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a masterpiece of explaining the sequence of discoveries that led to the development of the atomic bomb in a historical context. During my graduate studies at Cornell, I minored in theoretical physics and took courses from Hans Bethe and other luminaries, so I had met several of the physicists in the book. Yet I learned more physics from the book than I did in my courses.
