Vardhan

Reading List (and Beyond)

I don’t read a lot, but that doesn’t mean I don’t learn. These days, most of what I consume is compressed, interactive, and sometimes, surprisingly, from GPT.

So this isn’t just a list of books. It’s a list of sources that have shaped how I think — from videos and podcasts to textbooks and rabbit holes I fell into at 3 a.m.

📚 Books worth your time

  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack — dense, rich, uncompressible. I’m reading it right now.
  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — a modern classic of clarity.
  • Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss — snackable wisdom.
  • Practical UI — great if you're building software people actually use.
  • Textbooks — seriously. If you want to understand something deeply, find a textbook.

🎙 Podcasts & Audio

  • Lex Fridman — thoughtful longform conversations.
  • Andrew Huberman — especially if you like biology, health, and habit science.
  • Tim Ferriss — ask GPT which episodes to start with, it's good at this.

If you're looking for specific voices to follow, write to me. I’ll help if I can.

📺 YouTube & Visual Learning

Well, this is a subset of the list of people I’m subscribed to. Don’t know if I’ve covered everything. I’ve had a bunch of interests.

  • Technoblade — for the chaos, wit, and heart. Blood for the blood God.
  • Casey Neistat — storytelling with motion and magic.
  • Ted / TEDx Talks — always solid. Pick a topic and dive in.
  • Steve Jobs talks — especially old keynotes and interviews.
  • Richard Feynman — YouTube has a surprising amount of gold here.
  • Etho — I love how his videos are simple and how much fun he has.
  • The whole Hermitcraft crew — and a bunch of technical Minecrafters.
  • LTT (Linus Tech Tips) — for all the tech tips and tutorials on dropping expensive GPUs.
  • xkcd — well, his comics were fun, and his videos are even more fun.
  • Vsauce — come on, you gotta love Vsauce.
  • Pick Up Limes — wonderful channel. I like the philosophical videos more than the cooking content.
  • Andrej Karpathy — love how freely he shares whatever he’s learned. I want to do that too.
  • The School of Life — love Alain de Botton. Love their takes on things.
  • Y Combinator — if you want to learn about starting and growing startups, look no further.
  • GuitarZero2Hero — thank you for all the guitar playalongs.
  • Dr. Rashi Mahajan — my favourite ❤️
  • In Deep Geek — for all the LOTR nerdiness.
  • Vlogbrothers — the OGs. And their personal channels.
  • Not Just Bikes — for... not just bikes. Witty and sharp.
  • A bunch of cubing channels — I used to watch them a lot during my cubing phase.
  • Taran Van Hemert — AHK nerdiness and video editing wizardry.
  • GothamChess — yes, I love chess. I’m not very good, but it’s fun to watch and pretend to understand.
  • Casually Explained — the effort he puts into his videos is anything but casual.
  • Ultimate Frisbee Association | Hive Ultimate — I don’t only play frisbee, I watch it too.
  • Talks at Google and similar ones at top colleges — thank you Google for paying smart people to talk, recording it, and putting it online.
  • HealthyGamerGG — mental health stuff explained by a gamer who also happens to be a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.
  • Numberphile and Stand-up Maths — love them 3000.
  • A bunch of airsoft channels — yes, I had that phase too.
  • TierZoo — because who doesn’t need to know about animals’ stats.
  • Stuff Made Here — I wish I were as good an engineer as he is.
  • A bunch of stand-up comics — from Zakir Khan and Vir Das to James Veitch.
  • Colin and Samir — YouTuber’s YouTubers.
  • CGP Grey — be gone, penny. Hexagons are the bestagons.
  • A bunch of productivity YouTubers — from Matt D’Avella to Ali Abdaal.
  • Renaissance Periodization — for all the science based workout advice.
  • Kurzgesagt — no, I didn’t need to look that spelling up.
  • A bunch of animated funny video makers.
  • A bunch of people who make stuff — like “I Like to Make Stuff.”
  • Oversimplified — because history is better animated.
  • A bunch of skateboarding-related channels.
  • Nerf channels — I used to watch Nerf Socom, Nerf Boy Productions, Coop772 (haven’t watched in years though, still love Nerf).
  • Mark Rober — I told you, I like watching people make things.
  • A bunch of Clash Royale videos — not sponsored by GFuel.
  • A lot of music production channels — I used to watch them.
  • Also, I love commencement speeches.

💡 People & Essays

  • Paul Graham — read his essays. Some are sticky for life.
  • Sam Altman, Patrick Collison, Derek Sivers — wise people who write well.
  • Cal Newport — if you’re a student (and we all are), read and listen to him.

🧠 A Few Ideas

  • Stoicism — start anywhere. Meditations. Seneca. Ryan Holiday. It’ll find you.
  • Use GPT — not just for answers, but for curated learning paths, explanations, summaries.
  • Smart people compress their learnings into books. Or talks. Or posts. Seek those out.

This list is a bit of a brain dump right now — I’ll keep updating it as I come across new things worth sharing. In the meantime, stay curious.