2025 in Review

Speeches

I held a few lectures and speeches around the world. Most were private, but here is the recording of my favorite public speech of 2025: Winning Long-Term Games at VALUEx Berkshire.

Books Published

In 2025, I published one new book:

Poverty and Prosperity (November 2025) - The Principles That Build Civilizations and the Policies That Ruin Them. This book examines the economic and cultural mistakes that turn abundance into scarcity, and provides practical principles to make societies wealthier, freer, and more resilient.

I also started writing another book, to be published hopefully in 2026: "Beyond Compliance," on risk management.

Podcasts

I appeared on or produced 19 podcast episodes in 2025:

1. Too Big To Fail (January) - Discussing ergodicity and personal finance (in Italian)
2. The Knowledge #2 (January) - David Elikwu interviews me on winning long-term games
3. The Art of Quality, #2 (March) - With John Candeto, William Oliver, Ferdi von Bennigsen, and Paul Higgins on building a long-term culture
4. Boundaryless (March) - On organizational culture and change initiatives
5. Peter Eigen on Fighting Corruption (April) - We interview the founder of Transparency International for Patterns and Stories
6. Ben Nelson on Education (April) - We interview the founder of Minerva University for Patterns and Stories
7. Construction Genius (April) - Eric Anderton interviewed me on the real-world applications of AI to sharpen proposals and cut rework
8. Lina Ashar on Education (May) - We interview the founder of Dreamtime Learning for Patterns and Stories
9. Dag Detter on Unlocking the Hidden Value of Public Assets (June) - Interview with Dag Detter for Patterns and Stories on restructuring government portfolios of public assets
10. Shanta Devarajan on the Sri Lankan Crisis (June) - We discuss the Sri Lankan crisis and lessons learned for Patterns and Stories
11. Winning Long-Term Games with Julius Geiger (June) - Julius Geiger interviews me on winning long-term games
12. How Not To Invest (June) - We interview Barry Ritholtz on his latest book for Patterns and Stories
13. Cheryl Strauss Einhorn on Decision-Making (July) - We discuss her AREA method and her books for Patterns and Stories
14. Practical Applications of AI (July) - Vicki Reyzelman interviewed me on the applications of AI to one's current job
15. Philipp Krause on Public Finance (August) - We discuss public finance and the role of the Ministry of Finance for Patterns and Stories
16. Winning Long-Term Games (August) - Ritavan interviews me on my story and several books, including Winning Long-Term Games
17. Yohan Iddawela on Using Satellites for Economic Data (September) - Yohan is a data scientist at the Asian Development Bank discussing using satellites for economic data for Patterns and Stories
18. Construction Genius, #2 (September) - Eric Anderton interviewed me on the applications of AI to construction management and on soft skills for construction managers
19. Value After Hours #2 (October) - Tobias Carlisle and Jake Taylor invited me to discuss winning long-term games and reproducible success strategies

A reminder that you can find a list of all my podcast appearances here.

Blog Posts

I published 38 blog posts in 2025. Here is a selected list of the best ones, sorted by importance then recency:

1. ⭐⭐⭐ The Depolarization Manifesto (April) - You win at politics when your party loses and the government is still good
2. ⭐⭐⭐ Adversarial vs Collaborative Feedback (April) - How to give feedback and suggestions that are well-received
3. ⭐⭐ The Survey Trap (December) - How misleading responses distort decisions and why managers get clearer answers from direct observation
4. ⭐⭐ Incentives Are Overrated (September) - Habits are a stronger driver of behavior than incentives
5. ⭐⭐ Team-Building Activities (September) - They focus on nice-to-haves while ignoring bigger problems, proving leadership is detached
6. ⭐⭐ The Key To Success (May) - Spending more time on important-yet-not-urgent activities than most of your peers
7. ⭐⭐ How to Kill a Country's Education System (April) - In 10 simple steps
8. ⭐⭐ The Trajectory (April) - A framework for managing underperformance
9. ⭐⭐ The Simpler Way to Get Your Team to Use AI (March) - With concrete use cases and applications
10. ⭐⭐ How to Use Soft Metrics to Develop Your Team's Skills (March) - Soft metrics often beat hard ones for skill growth using the bad/good/great framework
11. ⭐ Quality Information (September) - The importance of collecting quality information, illustrated through Hercule Poirot's detective methods
12. ⭐ Positive-Sum Games Are the Optimal Selfish Choice (August) - If you want quality of life to grow beyond a certain level, society must predominantly use positive-sum tactics
13. ⭐ The Missing Element in Change Initiatives (August) - How to ensure your change initiative won't fizzle out
14. ⭐ Maintenance Culture (July) - How to prevent complacency in maintenance projects using the screwworm example
15. The Size of The Box (December) - Education costs expand to fill the size of the box we assume to be the default
16. Rethinking Redistribution Gradients (December) - Is income the right yardstick for poverty at all?
17. Voluntary Scarcity and the Myth of the Middle-Class Poverty Line (December) - Not all financial struggle is poverty; sometimes it's choosing to live at the edge of one's means

A reminder that you can find all my blog posts, and filter by date and tag or search through them, here.

Other activities

Apart from my consulting work and the courses I ran, I have created a browser extension that automatically highlights when a page cites retracted research, and I continued maintaining and promoting pandemic-questions.com, a website that answers common questions about pandemic preparedness.

Thank you again!

And my best wishes for a great 2026!