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WORLDLY: Things Worth Knowing About Yourself, Other People and the World You Live In
Most of us know a great deal about one corner of the world. The problem begins when we use that one corner to explain everything else.
Why do intelligent people make terrible decisions? Why do organisations reward the very behaviour they claim to dislike? Why does status sometimes belong to the person speaking least? Why do people stay in relationships, jobs and investments long after the evidence has changed? And why are we so much better at spotting other people’s biases than our own?
WORLDLY is a practical guide to understanding the patterns beneath everyday life.
Drawing from psychology, economics, history, strategy, anthropology, probability, culture and human behaviour, it builds a collection of mental maps for the three dramas we encounter again and ourselves, other people and the world we live in.
You’ll learn to recognise incentives hiding beneath behaviour, distinguish luck from judgement, understand status and social dynamics, negotiate without turning every conversation into a contest, think more clearly about money and risk, notice when identity is distorting an argument, and become harder to fool by compelling stories — including your own.
But WORLDLY is not about becoming the person at dinner who has an answer for everything.
Quite the opposite.
Its guiding principle is Know ten. Say one.
The aim is to know enough about how the world works that, when somebody describes a difficult boss, a strange investment, a relationship problem, an impossible decision or something that simply doesn’t make sense, you can sometimes see the pattern beneath the story — and offer the one observation that changes how the situation looks.
Because in an age when almost anyone can retrieve an answer in seconds, knowing facts is no longer particularly rare.
Knowing what kind of problem you are actually looking at is.
You don’t need to know everything.
You need enough maps to know where you are.
Why do intelligent people make terrible decisions? Why do organisations reward the very behaviour they claim to dislike? Why does status sometimes belong to the person speaking least? Why do people stay in relationships, jobs and investments long after the evidence has changed? And why are we so much better at spotting other people’s biases than our own?
WORLDLY is a practical guide to understanding the patterns beneath everyday life.
Drawing from psychology, economics, history, strategy, anthropology, probability, culture and human behaviour, it builds a collection of mental maps for the three dramas we encounter again and ourselves, other people and the world we live in.
You’ll learn to recognise incentives hiding beneath behaviour, distinguish luck from judgement, understand status and social dynamics, negotiate without turning every conversation into a contest, think more clearly about money and risk, notice when identity is distorting an argument, and become harder to fool by compelling stories — including your own.
But WORLDLY is not about becoming the person at dinner who has an answer for everything.
Quite the opposite.
Its guiding principle is Know ten. Say one.
The aim is to know enough about how the world works that, when somebody describes a difficult boss, a strange investment, a relationship problem, an impossible decision or something that simply doesn’t make sense, you can sometimes see the pattern beneath the story — and offer the one observation that changes how the situation looks.
Because in an age when almost anyone can retrieve an answer in seconds, knowing facts is no longer particularly rare.
Knowing what kind of problem you are actually looking at is.
You don’t need to know everything.
You need enough maps to know where you are.
Audible Audio
Published August 16, 2026
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