Ep 384: What Should I Read for a Deeper New Year?

December 22, 2025

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

The Format: This holiday special of the Deep Questions Podcast blends Cal Newport's solo deep dive into book recommendations with unscripted listener calls, tying seasonal reflection to practical wisdom for a deeper 2025. A reflective advisory session packed with intellectual enthusiasm and pragmatic advice.
The Key Players: Cal Newport, productivity guru and author of Deep Work, dominates with passionate book breakdowns and caller responses; Jesse, the producer, chimes in with light banter on tech history and holiday cheer, creating a dynamic teacher-student rapport focused on anti-distraction living.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

The episode revolves around nonfiction wisdom for intentional living amid digital chaos, blending timeless books with real-time listener dilemmas on tech, creativity, and meaning.

Topic 1: Non-Self-Help Books for Deep Wisdom – Newport pulls six shelf favorites (Walden, Lincoln's Virtues, The Case for God, You Are Not a Gadget, The Shallows, Falling Upward) to inspire lifestyle-centric planning, moral growth, pre-modern faith, tech humanism, brain rewiring risks, and midlife resilience.
Topic 2: Parenting and Screen Resistance – Callers seek strategies against family smartphone addiction, with Newport advocating tool-like phone rules over bans.
**Topic 3: Multi

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What you'll learn

1 (00:05) **Holiday Episode Intro: Listener Takeover & Reading Recommendations**
2 (01:44) **Book 1: Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854)**
3 (07:28) **Book 2: Lincoln's Virtues by William Lee Miller (2002)**
4 (10:56) **Book 3: The Case for God by Karen Armstrong (2009)**
5 (21:21) **Book 4: You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier (2010)**
6 (26:30) **Book 5: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (2010)**
7 (28:48) **Book 6: Falling Upward by Richard Rohr (2011)**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In our annual holiday episode, Cal tackles one of the questions he’s asked most often: What should I read? But with a twist. He recommends six books that are not from the self-help or advice genre that will nonetheless help you change your life into something deeper. For the rest of the episode, he then answers listener calls.

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo

Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia

CAL’S BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:

Walden by Henry David Thoreau [2:40]
Lincoln’s Virtues by William Lee Miller [7:28]
The Case for God by Karen Armstrong [10:54]
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier [21:25]
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr [26:28]
Falling Upward by Richard Rohr [28:45]

CALLS:

Concerned father and husband about smartphones [37:48]
Living deeply with multiple gigs [43:27]
Effective timeblocking [47:19]
The Deep Life for non-knowledge workers [54:01]
Dealing with overwhelming technology [58:59]
The real cost of AI [1:02:59]
Where to start with deep work? [1:07:33]

Links:

Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at calnewport.com/slow
Get a signed copy of Cal’s “Slow Productivity” at peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/
Cal’s monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba?

Thanks to our Sponsors:

monarch.com/deep
wayfair.com
notion.com/cal
reclaim.ai/cal

Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering.

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