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There’s a question I keep hearing from marketers, newsletter creators, and founders alike:

“Is email marketing still worth it when AI is doing… practically everything?”

Look, it’s a fair question, and I think many folks are pondering this themselves.

The short answer is yes. Emphatically! But the longer answer is a little more interesting, because the way email works is changing faster than most senders realise (or are able to get comfortable with).

And this has nothing to do with email being broken. It’s built around the premise that the inbox itself is getting quite a bit smarter.

Allow me to explain (and grab a cup of coffee because I’m taking a deep dive into this one).

Your inbox has a new gatekeeper

There’s an uncomfortable future ahead for email senders, and there are elements of this already happening. And it begins with the fact that your subscribers may wind up never actually reading your email. Well, not the way you wrote it, anyway.

Inboxes are already generating AI-powered summaries that appear before an email is opened. Apple, for example, is replacing your carefully crafted preheader text with a machine-written preview. Gmail’s Gemini integration does something similar post-open, summarising your content into a few bullet points before a reader scrolls to your words.

Let that sink in for a minute. In the short-attention-span economy, this is going to mean folks aren’t even skimming anymore. They’re getting things told to them by AI, and choosing what to dive into from there.

Yes, your subject line still matters. And yes, your content still matters (even more so). But there’s now an intermediary AI layer sitting between your send and your subscriber’s attention. And that AI is making editorial decisions about your email on your behalf.

The almost scary part is that this isn’t even a future scenario. It’s happening now. Gmail made its AI summary features free to all personal account users in the US earlier this year, and Apple Intelligence has been summarising emails since late 2024 on supported devices. If your audience skews toward Gmail or Apple Mail (and for most of us, close to 90% of inbox usage comes from these two clients), this directly affects how your emails are consumed.

So what do you do about it?

The answer is what’s going to separate email senders that send from those that perform, and it begins with a relatively simple concept: You write for two readers, both the human and the machine.

Writing for AI (without losing your soul)

This doesn’t mean stuffing your emails with keywords or writing like a robot. In fact, it almost means the opposite.

AI summaries extract meaning from structure and clarity, so if your email rambles, the summary will too…or worse, it’ll pull the wrong takeaway entirely. Now, if your email is clear, scannable, and has one obvious point (likely per section), the AI in the inbox is far more likely to surface the thing you want it to surface.

And if you want to see what that looks like in practice:

Lead with the value. You don’t want to be burying your most important point below an insanely long intro. If AI is summarising your first 100 words, you’ll want to make those words count. Treat the opening of every email like a headline and a subheadline had a proverbial baby: punchy, clear, and (hopefully) impossible to misinterpret.

One idea per section. This has always been good email practice (the Rule of One, as I call it), but it’s now almost structurally critical. AI models parse sections, so if each section has a distinct, clear point, the summary will likely reflect that. Mix three ideas into one paragraph, and the machines will pick whichever they fancy, meaning less control over what you want your readers to see.

Use descriptive headers. Not clever ones. Descriptive ones. “The Secret Sauce“ tells an AI very little unless it’s extremely contextually supported. “How to Improve Open Rates With Segmentation” tells it all it needs to summarise that section well. This is a trade-off, I’ll admit, and for creative writers, it’s weighing up personality vs. parsability. But the best email writers find a way to do both, and it can be done well.

Should you care that LLMs might cite your email content?

This one’s interesting, and it feeds on both the email and SEO worlds. You may have heard the term AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation). Essentially, it’s the practice of structuring content so that AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews can find it, understand it, and cite it when answering user questions.

Now, most of this conversation lives in the SEO world, true, but if you’re publishing your newsletter on the web (think Substack, Beehiiv, Ghost, or even your own site), your email content is web content. And that means AI search tools can, and likely will, pull from it.

So, the question begs: Should you optimise for this? And, like any good email advice, it depends.

And here’s what it depends on.

If you’re writing actionable, original content with clear structure and genuine expertise, you’re already doing 80% of the work. AI models favour content that’s well-sourced, clearly structured, and factually dense. Sound familiar? That’s just good writing practice and the stuff you should be doing for email anyway.

Where it gets tactical? Well, my advice is often that you’ll need to make sure your web-published newsletters have descriptive titles, clear meta descriptions, and aren’t locked behind a paywall that blocks AI crawlers (unless this is your strategy, of course, but that’s a discussion for another day).

Structure your posts with headers that mirror the questions your readers actually ask. If your newsletter answers “What’s the best email platform for creators?” in a detailed, opinionated way, there’s a real chance an AI search tool surfaces that answer.

This isn’t necessarily about gaming a system either. You want to create content and structure advice that’s genuinely useful (making that usefulness discoverable). Which, if we’re being honest, has always been the email marketer’s job.

AI-Generated content (The current elephant in every inbox)

I have a few strong opinions on this one, because we’re seeing a turning point in the value of content of late. AI should help you write emails. AI should not write your emails.

And that distinction matters more than you think, because your audience is, and will, notice.

Yes, the tools are extraordinary (especially in getting things done and fitting that into the limited time we all have). I use AI regularly. For brainstorming, researching, restructuring drafts, testing different angles on a paragraph, and mainly for understanding the intricacies of my audience behaviour.

It’s brilliant at accelerating the process and removing that blank-page paralysis we all sometimes face as writers and creatives. But if you hand over the entire creative process to a machine, your emails will sound like everyone else’s emails, and then the point of sending something falls away. In a channel where trust and voice are absolutely everything, sounding generic is almost worse than sounding imperfect.

But the balance is tricky, isn’t it? Your readers can now spot AI-generated copy far more easily than ever, precisely because they’re exposed to so much of it (cue the “delves”, “it’s this, it isn’t this, the poor “em-dashes”, you know the drill.

Phrases, cadence, the relentless positivity…it all starts blurring lines. And then, when everything sounds the same, nothing stands out. You see where this is going?

To give this an analogy, you want to use AI as a co-pilot (yep, there’s even AI called that, thanks Microsoft). You should ALWAYS remain the captain.

Let it generate options. Let it tighten your prose. Hell, let it even write something in different angles to help you define some creative approaches if you need to, but make sure the final product sounds like you. It’s your experiences, your observations, your voice that your subscribers signed up for, and it’s the one thing AI genuinely cannot replicate (at least, not until they plug it into our brains, which, hey, may still be coming).

Which email platforms enable you for AI well?

Because I work with many email senders looking to grow in the right direction, I get asked this almost constantly. Truthfully, my answer is always the same: the best platform is the one that fits your stage, your end-goal, and your budget.

That said, a few stand out for different reasons:

Beehiiv and Substack have become a go-to for newsletter creators.

Both have strong growth tools (referral programmes, recommendations, boosts, etc), clean editors, built-in monetisation features, and audience growth opportunities..

I’m intrigued to see where their AI-tools begin transforming things, as this is where the majority of newsletter-specific senders are finding the most traction right now.

Stripo is another surprising email platform with strong AI-led tools. Now, Stripo isn’t being used to send and manage emails, but their AI-assisted modular and HTML building tools are exceptional for time-saving and pushing email boundaries, and if you’re in the more visual email space, a solid consideration for email design generation.

Brevo and ActiveCampaign remain solid for businesses running broader email marketing campaigns (think e-commerce, B2B lead nurturing, and transactional emails alongside newsletter content).

They deserve a mention here because they’re also doing a heap to ensure email senders are enabled with strong AI-led tools around email metric analysis, campaign composition and strategy optimisation across various elements within their platforms.

The common thread here, though? Whatever you choose, you’ll want to make sure it supports the fundamentals before any fancy AI features: clean list management, solid deliverability, segmentation capabilities, and analytics you’ll actually use.

No platform (or its AI tools) will save a bad strategy, and a good strategy can work on almost any platform.

What’s actually working right now

Rather than simply theorising, here’s what I’m seeing work in practice among the email senders I’m working and collaborating with, and who are adapting well to the AI era that we’re moving into:

Hyper-relevant segmentation. AI tools inside platforms like Beehiiv are making it easier to segment audiences based on engagement patterns (and not just demographics, which is what we’ve all been doing for ages). Senders who use this are seeing stronger click-through rates and more engaged audiences because they’re matching content to behaviour, not merely on what they assume audiences want to engage with.

Cross-promotion and discovery networks. One of the most effective growth strategies I’ve seen for audience growth is newsletter cross-promotion. Essentially, finding complementary newsletters and sharing audiences is almost a staple for most growing newsletters, so finding solid cross-promotion tools and building on those is now becoming a strong recommendation.

Plain-text and hybrid formats. There’s a growing shift back toward simpler email design. We’re talking fewer images, more text, and even more conversational tone (likely, to stand out amongst the AI-sludge). This isn’t merely a style preference; simpler emails tend to render more consistently across AI-summarised views and are less likely to have their key message buried by a machine-generated preview that pulls from an image alt tag instead of a headline.

Consistent, audience-first content. This one never changes. It will never change (well, for good email senders anyway). The newsletters thriving in the AI era are the ones that always treated their audience as people first and metrics second. They write with empathy, specificity, and some genuine expertise, because no amount of AI can substitute for that.

What to do with all of this

Email marketing isn’t being replaced by AI. You can stop worrying about that.

Email is, however, being mediated by it, and this is out of your control.

Inboxes are moving from neutral containers to interpretative layers. AI decides what to surface, what to summarise, and increasingly so, what to actually prioritise, meaning email senders need to think about their structure, clarity, and discoverability in ways they haven’t (a.k.a, shifting your mindset from what it was five years ago).

The most important thing for any email sender right now is to realise that the fundamentals haven’t changed. Write something worth reading. Send it to people who want it. Make the value obvious. And, folks, be human. That’s why your audience is there.

That’s also why knowledge-sharing communities matter more than ever. When AI can generate a passable email in seconds, the voices that cut through are the ones rooted in real experience, contain genuine curiosity, and have a willingness to learn publicly.

Communities built around that kind of exchange (where practitioners share what’s actually working, not just what sounds good) become a beacon of light in a tumultuous digital ocean filled with tons of AI noise.

AI raises the bar on all of those things. And honestly? That’s not a bad thing. The senders who were already doing this well are the ones who’ll continue to thrive. The ones relying on sheer volume, generic (read “bland”) content, and spray-and-pray tactics are going to find the AI era increasingly unforgiving.

The inbox is telling you what it wants. My question, dear reader, is will you be listening, or will you pass that on to AI too?

Des Brown is an email marketing expert and the creator of Email Advice in Your Inbox, a newsletter for email professionals, marketers, and creators. He’s also the co-founder of CrossLetter, a platform for cross-promoting, finding email sponsorships and discovering newsletters. Connect with Des on LinkedIn.

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Des Brown:

  In this episode of Glasp Talk, Des shares how to achieve 50%+ open rates — from nailing deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and crafting personalized emails, to re-engaging inactive subscribers and using AI for smarter segmentation. If you want to build an email list people actually read, this one’s for you.

• 🟩 Updated PDF upload limit:

  You can now upload PDFs up to 500MB per file to Glasp — perfect for lengthy research papers, full ebooks, and dense reports. Start highlighting without worrying about file size! Check the tutorial below.

  👉 How to Upload and Highlight Local PDFs on Glasp

• 🟨 New Tutorial - Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts:

  Did you know you can bulk download transcripts from your entire YouTube channel with Glasp? Connect your channel, select the videos you need, and export everything at once in .txt, .md, .csv, .json, or .srt — no copy-pasting required. Check the tutorial below.

  👉 How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

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“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

― Leonardo da Vinci

Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

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📚 3 Good Recommendations

The 2nd Phase of Agentic Development
by (4 mins)

• From clones to reimaginings. Early agentic projects copied existing software using test suites. The new phase—like Cloudflare’s EmDash (a serverless WordPress successor) and Cheng Lou’s Pretext—rethinks old problems from scratch.

• Cheap code enables challengers. Coding agents lower the cost of taking on entrenched software, making it practical to attack incumbents that were previously too risky to compete with.

• Agents accelerate battle-testing. New projects can use AI to synthetically test and harden software rapidly, closing the reliability gap with mature tools that took decades to stabilize.

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Google’s 20-year secret is now available to every enterprise
by (7 mins)

• Consumer tech’s secret is now accessible to enterprises: Companies like Google and Netflix built trillion-dollar empires by capturing user behavior and feeding it into learning systems. Enterprise software never had this loop because decisions were scattered across meetings, emails, and people’s heads.

• AI agents are the key enabler: When humans edit an agent’s proposal (e.g., adjusting a discount due to competitive pressure), tacit expertise becomes a structured, learnable signal—creating the instrumentation layer enterprises never had.

• The opportunity is “context graphs” that capture decision reasoning: Incumbents store outcomes but lose the “why.” Winners will capture rationale at decision time, compounding institutional judgment that even frontier AI models can’t replicate.

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Bad Analogies
by (13 mins)

• The Amazon analogy is overused. Bezos had a calculated strategy where growth generated cash; WeWork used the same defense but had broken economics. Not every money-losing company is building toward dominance.

• AI labs face a key difference: competition. Amazon and Uber emerged from their spending with strategic monopolies. AI labs are all pursuing identical scaling strategies against each other—no clear path to a runaway winner.

• Analogies are starting points, not conclusions. The real work is examining why a comparison fits. Whether AI labs become the next Amazon or the next AOL depends on deeper analysis than “they’re losing money too.”

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📣 Community Updates

• 🟨 Pricing Update:

  On May 1, 2026, Glasp will update its pricing for the first time since launch. The Pro Plan will move from $12 to $15/mo, and the Unlimited Plan from $30 to $36/mo. Existing subscribers won’t be affected until their next billing cycle. The Free plan remains unchanged. See full details here.

• 🟦 Relevant Highlights:
  Did you know Glasp now surfaces highlights from articles you’ve read in the past that are relevant to what you’re currently viewing? With Relevant Highlights, you can instantly connect new content to your existing knowledge — making every reading session smarter. Try it on any highlight page today.

  

• 🟩 PDF Upload Limit Increased:
  You can now upload PDF files up to 500MB — giving you more room to save and highlight your most important documents on Glasp.
  👉 How to Upload and Highlight Local PDFs on Glasp

• 🟥 New Tutorial: Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts:
  We published a new tutorial on how to bulk download YouTube transcripts from your saved videos on Glasp. Instead of copying transcripts one by one, you can export multiple at once — perfect for reviewing, studying, or repurposing your own content. Check the tutorial below.
  👉 How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

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Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• YouTube Summarizer with ChatGPT on FactCheckTool.com

  

• Glasp on CrossLetter

  

• 5 Ways to Transcribe A YouTube Video To Text: Fast, Free & Simple on Drost Video’s YouTube

  

• Try using 4 AI tools to summarize YouTube clips into easy-to-read text in just a few seconds. on Peesamac’s YouTube

  

• Top AI Chrome Extensions Every Developer Should Use on ScriptandTools

• Glasp on AI Collection

  

• 13 narzędzi/rozszerzeń summarizera YouTube opartych na sztucznej inteligencji, które oszczędzają godziny (13 AI-Powered YouTube Summarizer Tools/Extensions That Will Save You Hours) on Newsblog

• Revolutionize Your Learning with Glasp: The Ultimate Web Highlighter on AI Authority’s YouTube

  

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

Most YouTube creators script, record, and edit their videos — but the transcript rarely goes anywhere after that. It stays locked inside the video, unused.

Glasp lets you bulk download transcripts from your own YouTube channel — automatically syncing all your videos so you can export them at once, in the format of your choice.

Once set up, Glasp will:

• Sync all public videos from your YouTube channel

• Let you select one video, a few, or your entire catalog

• Download transcripts in bulk — .txt, .md, .csv, .json, or .srt

• Allow you to track up to 30 videos per channel (Pro plan)

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to connect your YouTube channel to Glasp and bulk download your transcripts — so the ideas you’ve recorded actually stick.

Note: Please use this feature for your own content and use transcripts responsibly. Make sure to comply with YouTube’s terms of service and the copyright laws in your country.

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

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🪄 How It Works

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Select a browser: Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, Microsoft Edge, etc.

On your search tab, type in “glasp.co“ and you will be automatically directed to the page of Glasp. Or access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp - YouTube Transcript

Upon reaching it click “Sign up” and continue using your Google Account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, please go to your profile page by clicking “Dashboard” at the top right. If you cannot see the "Dashboard," please visit glasp.co again.

Step 2: Go to the “Channels” Tab

On your Glasp profile page, click the Channels tab at the top. Then, click “+ Add YouTube Channel.”

Please check your YouTube channel's handle. You can find it on your channel page, right below the channel name.

Then, type the channel handle on the modal and click “Add Channel.”

After you click “Add Channel,” Glasp will connect your channel and start syncing all your public videos.

Step 3: View Your Channel

Once your channel is added to the list, it shows up on your page. Click it to see the videos’ transcripts.

You can see all the videos in chronological order by publication date.

Step 4: Download the Transcripts

To bulk download the transcripts, click the check box at the top. Then, click “Download All” at the top right.

Choose your preferred file format and click it. Your transcripts will be downloaded as a zip file.

Unzip the downloaded file to access your transcripts.

To download transcripts from more than 20 videos at once, click "Load More" at the bottom and select the checkbox again.

To download the transcript from a single video, click the download icon next to that video and choose your preferred file format.

You can also copy the transcript directly by clicking the copy icon next to each video.

Your video transcripts shouldn’t stay locked inside YouTube.

With Glasp’s YouTube Channel Tracking, you can connect your channel, bulk download all your transcripts, and turn your videos into reusable knowledge — in the format of your choice.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start making the most of everything you’ve recorded.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡 Pro Tips

Go further with these resources:

👉 How to Import YouTube Transcripts into NotebookLM with Glasp — Use your video transcripts as sources for AI-powered research and insights

👉 How to Highlight YouTube Transcript — Save and annotate the most important moments from any video

👉 How to Turn a YouTube Video into an X Post and Article — Repurpose your video content into written posts and articles

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1. $100M Offers — · 70 highlighters · Save to Glasp

   

2. Atomic Habits — James Clear · 66 highlighters · Save to Glasp

3. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — Eric Jorgenson · 59 highlighters · Save to Glasp

📣 Community Updates

📌 Community Milestones

• Kindle highlights imported: 60,000+ unique books

• Hatch ideas generated: 400,000+

• Audio filese transcribed: 60,000+

🔧 Feature Updates

• Audio files — You can now upload audio files up to 5 hours long

• PDF upload — Free users can now upload up to 30 PDF files

📖 New Blogs & Articles

• Best Free Kindle Highlight Exporter: Glasp, Readwise, and Clippings.io Compared

• Glasp Articles — Research-backed articles on learning, focus, and knowledge management. Please check it out!

  • Intellectual Compound Interest: Why Connecting Ideas Across Fields Makes You Unstoppable

  • Knowledge Creators: How to Turn What You Learn Into What You Earn

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🌍 Glasp in the Wild

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• Glasp: Kindle Highlights Exporter on FactCheckTool.com

  

• YouTube Summary Powered by ChatGPT: Save Time and Learn More! (Google Chrome Extension # 02) on Thiyagu Suriya’s YouTube

  

• YouTube video summary using ChatGPT | Chrome Extension on Hacks360’s YouTube

  

• How to Get YouTube Summary Glasp AI Chrome extension using ChatGPT & Claude on EasyTutoFlow’s YouTube

  

• YouTube Summary with ChatGPT Chrome Extension on AI in 5 Minutes’s YouTube

  

• The Ultimate YouTube Hack: Glasp + ChatGPT = VERY Powerful Insights! on REtipster’s YouTube

  

• 📡 What Experts Should Pay Attention To: Curation Signals - #01 on ’s

• 3초만에 유튜브 요약 끝!!👍by YouTube summary with ChatGPT on 잼이찌 엑셀’s YouTube

  

• Cara mudah membuat youtube summary chat GPT mudah ternyata #chatgpt on nurulilmarsah’s YouTube

  

• 【2026年版】ChromeをAI化する拡張機能おすすめ10選【無料】 on MiraLab AI

• How to convert Youtube videos into text | Bui Duy Phuong on YouTube

  

• Curate web content and manage Knowledge for Research on Fred Blauer musings on Web3, Defi and other blockchain buzz words

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We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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“Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

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📚 3 Good Recommendations

We Need to Talk About Agents
by (14 mins)

• The article argues that the current “AI agents replacing workers” narrative is misleading: AI’s real value is not mainly labor substitution, but rethinking workflows and systems to unlock new capabilities, growth, and productivity.

• It uses historical examples like GM vs. Toyota and factory electrification to show that simply swapping humans for machines usually fails; the winners redesign operations around new technology instead of forcing it into old structures.

• For Vertical AI, the author says founders should stop selling “agents” or “digital co-workers” and instead focus on concrete business outcomes—reducing admin burden, capturing “work not done,” expanding revenue, and helping people shift toward higher-value work.

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The Displacement of Cognitive Labor and What Comes After
by Sahaj Garg (23 mins)

• AI has already surpassed humans in many cognitive domains, transforming work from relying on raw intelligence to emphasizing judgment, taste, and the ability to guide and synthesize AI outputs, while massively increasing productivity.

• Knowledge work is likely to be largely automated within a few years, with physical labor following faster than expected due to AI-accelerated robotics, leading to widespread job displacement, identity crises, and potential social and political instability.

• In the long term, many cognitive and physical goods become abundant and cheap, but scarcity persists in areas like land, human experience, status, and community—requiring new economic systems and new ways for people to find meaning, purpose, and social structure.

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The 8 Trends I’m Betting My Entire Marketing Strategy On in 2026
by Neil Patel (14 mins)

• Search is shifting beyond Google to multiple platforms and AI tools: Discovery now happens across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and AI platforms, so brands must optimize content for “search everywhere,” not just traditional SEO.

• AI is powerful but must be used carefully: Many teams misuse AI and create errors (“AI slop”). Top performers use AI for ideation and drafts, while validating outputs and applying human judgment.

• Future marketing is intent-driven, on-platform, and global: Brands should capture leads داخل platforms, build strong topical authority for AI-driven recommendations, and leverage translation tools to reach global audiences.

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• Glasp: Easily Save and Highlight Images on FactCheckTool.com

  

• Resumo de vídeos do YouTube com Inteligência Artificial - ChatGPT | IA para Marketing Digital on Agency Club’s YouTube

  

• 유튜브 영상 내용을 텍스트로 뽑아주고, 이것을 챗GPT로 바로 보내 요약할 수 있는 확장 프로그램 (An extension that extracts YouTube video content as text and sends it directly to ChatGPT for summarization.) on 또 다른 세상의 엉뚱이’s YouTube

• #406 - Gli Attrezzi del Curatore (#406 - The Curator’s Tools) on Podscan

• 📡 A Cosa Gli Esperti Dovrebbero Prestare Attenzione: Curation Signals - #01 (📡 What Experts Should Pay Attention To: Curation Signals - #01) by on

• Glasp AI Clone: Learning Memory on Innolope

  

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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📢 A quick note for YouTube Summary users

We’re currently fixing a bug where the sidebar appears in the top-left corner of the screen. While we work on it, please use Glasp Reader as an alternative.

Also, if you run your own YouTube channel, register it with YouTube Channel Tracking. Registered channels are prioritized for backup, so your content stays accessible even when issues occur.

There’s a word in Japanese for the books you buy but never read: tsundoku (積ん読).

The word dates to 1879. The earliest known usage appeared in a satirical text about a teacher who owned books but didn’t read them — written not as a criticism, but as a wry observation. Everyone does it. Your professor does it with academic journals. You do it with the 47 Kindle samples you downloaded last month.

In Japan, tsundoku carries no shame. The books are there. They’ll wait.

Western reading culture tends to frame unread books differently. You bought it, so you should read it. You started it, so you should finish it. Every unread spine becomes an accusation.

We think that framing is exactly wrong.

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Umberto Eco’s Anti-Library

Umberto Eco — Italian novelist and semiotician, author of The Name of the Rose — owned a personal library of roughly 30,000 books. Visitors would inevitably ask: “Have you really read all these?”

He found the question tiresome. The whole point was that he hadn’t. A library of books you’ve already read is an archive. A library of books you haven’t read is a research tool.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, gave this idea a name: the anti-library. His argument is counterintuitive but airtight: the value of a personal library grows in proportion to how much of it you haven’t read. Read books represent what you already know. Unread books represent what you don’t know — and what you don’t know is vastly larger, and more important.

Taleb calls people who focus on the limits of their own knowledge “antischolars.” The anti-library is a humility device. It works because it keeps you honest about the size of your ignorance.

This is where the research gets interesting — why unread books measurably make you smarter, what the psychology of book-buying actually reveals, and how to turn your tsundoku pile into a working knowledge system.

→ Continue reading on Glasp

What’s on your anti-library right now — the book that’s been on your shelf the longest, unread? Leave a comment.

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

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I’m Bobby Powers, and I run the Leader & Learner publication, where I write two stories per week to help readers develop curiosity, communication, and leadership.

If you asked any of my friends what I’m known for, they’d say reading. I’m unabashedly addicted to reading, and I’ve read over 1,000 books in the past 15 years (mostly nonfiction).

In my reading, I’m a turtle, not a hare. My pace hovers in the “slow to average” range, but I spend 2-3 hours every day reading, which is the sole reason for my high book count.

When people hear how many hundreds of hours I spend reading, they tend to ask an important question: “Why?”

Why spend all of this time with my nose in a book?
Why not spend that time watching movies, TV shows, or YouTube videos?
Why not invest that time in golf, chess, video games, or any other activity?

This post is my attempt to answer that question. Consider it my love letter to books.

If you’re a fellow bibliophile, I hope many of these thoughts will resonate with you and that you’ll share your own list of literary love in the comments section. Or, if the very idea of an ode to books brings to mind one particular friend who’s a lovable book nerd, I hope you’ll pass this list along to them to brighten their day.

Here are 15 things I love about books:

1. Books forge friendships. I met one of my best friends by nerding out over books at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Once we realized we each ran book websites or podcasts, we swapped contact info and have been tight ever since, meeting up every couple of months to swap life stories and reading recs over dinner.

2. Books supply interesting stories to share with others. The first book I read for fun as an adult was Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. One of the things that appealed to me about that book was the trove of fascinating stories it gave me for happy hours and coffee dates with friends.

3. Books teach us how to craft more enjoyable conversations. Along with giving me tons of conversational ammo of interesting topics to discuss, books have explicitly taught me how to listen better, ask thoughtful questions, and tell better stories.

4. Reading is one of the best ways to solve problems. Struggling to give feedback to friends, family, or co-workers? There’s a book for that. Want to learn how to start a business? There’s a book for that. Same with developing grit, making better decisions, or becoming a writer. Much of my reading the past 15 years has followed the same pattern: Realize I suck at something → Find a book on that topic → Learn how to improve → Put those ideas into practice → Suck less.

5. Books build potential energy within us. They create a reservoir of knowledge, insights, and ideas to tap into whenever we need them most. As novelist Walter Mosley said, “A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.”

6. Books are a cheap way to get an education. Many figures throughout history have credited reading as their primary means of learning, including Malcom X, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Doris Lessing. School is expensive. Books are cheap.

7. Reading fiction builds empathy. Not only has early research loosely supported this theory, but you can feel its truth when you read well-written novels like The Vanishing Half, Persepolis, The Green Mile, All the Light We Cannot See, or To Kill a Mockingbird. Books transport you into the challenges of people from other cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. “Books are other lives,” says novelist Donna Tartt. “They enable us to be other people.”

8. Fiction can also help us develop character. Les Misérables taught me love in all its forms: storge (familial), agape (selfless), eros (romantic), philautia (self-love), etc. Atonement showed me the power of forgiveness (and the cost of bitterness). A Christmas Carol encouraged me to approach life with joy and thankfulness.

9. Biographies show us what’s possible for humans to achieve. Reading about Hamilton’s prodigious writing output showed me I can write more than I thought possible. Biographies about Abraham Lincoln taught me how to turn enemies into friends. And reading about the life of Mister Rogers made me earnestly desire to become a better human.

10. Books give us travel visas for other worlds. You can explore the ocean depths with the crew of the Nautilus, spend years under house arrest in a Russian hotel, watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona alongside American and British expats, or explore space with astronaut Ryland Grace. Books are a portal to other countries, times, and dimensions.

11. Books help us self-reflect. In the words of my friend Matt Hutson, “Books are mirrors, time machines, and trail markers all at once. They show you where you’ve been. They reflect who you are. And sometimes, if you’re paying attention, they whisper something about where you’re headed.”

12. Books hold powerful people accountable. They correct false records when historical events have been whitewashed and give us a peek into what’s happening in locations we can’t see with our own eyes. A few recent examples from my reading: Kill Anything That Moves, Confidence Man, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

13. Books allow us to be mentored by dead emperors, business titans, and Olympic athletes. People whom we could never normally ask for advice are as close as your local library or Kindle account. Take a second to consider how insane that is. You have wisdom on tap, waiting for you, whenever you’re ready. Just open a book.

14. Books help us refine our life philosophy. Who do you want to be? What does success look like to you? I’ve gradually developed answers to those questions by reading about the lives of many people and asking myself how I do or don’t want my life to resemble theirs. I’ve even done this with polarizing people throughout history, like Lyndon B. Johnson, Winston Churchill, J.K. Rowling, and Elon Musk.

15. A single book can change your life. Whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction, the next book you pick up could drastically alter the trajectory of your life. What book will you pick up next? How will it change you?

I hope you enjoy these great books. Each one includes an affiliate link from Bookshop.org. (If you buy one, you’ll support me as well as local bookstores. Win-win!)

If you’re a book nerd like me, I’d love to connect. Drop me a comment to say hey or subscribe to my Leader & Leader publication, where I share two posts per week for curious leaders and learners.

Btw, my passion for learning is one of the reasons I’ve been a long-time Glasp user. To me, there’s nothing more powerful than knowledge, and I never want to lose the insights I learn from articles or videos I stumble across online. I’m thankful to have a tool that tracks what I learn, along with what I plan to learn next. (Try their “bookmark” feature if you haven’t yet.)

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Bobby Powers:

  Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries, revealing their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, Bobby Powers, is a dedicated learner passionate about leadership and personal development. With over a decade of experience managing teams, leading onboarding, and Learning and Development programs at various startups and SMBs, Bobby is also an avid reader, having read over a thousand books in the last 15 years.

  ✨ Want a concise summary before diving in? Install the YouTube Summary with ChatGPT extension by Glasp for instant video summaries!

• 🟦 Kindle Highlights Import:
  Did you know that you can import your Kindle highlights into Glasp? With the Glasp browser extension, you can export all your highlights in one click as TXT, CSV, or Markdown — or send them directly to Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, and more. You can even get a daily email with random highlights to reinforce what you’ve read. Please check this tutorial.

  👉 How to Download Highlights and Notes from Kindle

• 🟨 PDF Highlights:
  Did you know that you can upload and highlight locally stored PDFs using Glasp? Upload any local PDF to Glasp, highlight key passages as you read, add notes, and even generate an AI summary — all in your browser. Please check this tutorial.

  👉 How to Highlight PDFs with Glasp

Would you like to take Glasp on the go?

With the Glasp mobile app, you can highlight and organize your favorite content anytime, anywhere. Stay productive on the move and never miss an insightful quote.

Download for iOS

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We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to Review Kindle Highlights Daily with Glasp

Most readers highlight passages on Kindle — but never revisit them. Daily Kindle Review is a free Glasp feature that automatically sends your Kindle highlights to your inbox, helping you remember and retain what you’ve read.

Once set up, Glasp will:

• Deliver random Kindle highlights to your inbox every day

• Let you choose which books to include

• Allow you to adjust the frequency — daily, twice a week, or weekly

• Let you share highlights directly to X (Twitter) from your email

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to import your Kindle books into Glasp and enable Daily Kindle Review — so the ideas you’ve underlined actually stick.

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

🪄 How It Works

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Select a browser: Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, Microsoft Edge, etc.

On your search tab, type in “glasp.co“ and you will be automatically directed to the page of Glasp. Or access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp — Kindle Highlights Review

Upon reaching it click “Sign up” and continue using your Google Account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, you will be redirected to the Chrome Web Store.

Step 2: Install the Glasp extension to your browser

Click Add to Chrome(Brave, Safari, or Edge) and install Glasp to your chosen browser.

👉 Glasp — Chrome Web Store

👉 Glasp — Safari Web Store

After you install the extension, make sure you pin it on the toolbar. It makes it easier to open the Glasp on the sidebar. If you’re asked to sign in to Glasp on the sidebar, please do it.

Step 3: Go to your Glasp profile page

Once you’ve installed the Glasp extension and signed in, go to your profile page by clicking the Profile icon in the sidebar.

This will take you to your Profile page. Now, click Kindle at the top.

Step 4: Sign in to Kindle Cloud Reader

After you install Glasp, please visit Kindle Cloud Reader. You can search Kindle Cloud Reader on Google. And the page’s URL is like https://read.amazon.com or https://read.amazon.jp

Step 5: Select a Kindle book to receive Daily Kindle Review

If you can successfully log in to Kindle Cloud Reader, you can see a page like below. So, please click Notes & Highlights on the left.

You can see a page below. Select a book to copy highlights on the left. Then, please click Select Books on the Glasp modal at the top right. If you cannot see the modal, so make sure that you’ve successfully installed it.

Then, please select books you’d like to receive daily review. After selecting books, click Import to Glasp at the bottom right.

Step 6: Go back to your profile page

After importing books, go back to your profile page. In the Kindle section, you’ll see all the Kindle books you’ve imported.

Step 7: Set up Daily Kindle Review

Click the Menu icon at the left. Then, select Settings on the modal.

On the Settings page, click the Email section.

In the Email section, find Daily Kindle Review. Here, you can choose how often you’d like to receive your Kindle highlights.

Step 8: Receive Kindle Review

Once you’ve set it up, you’ll start receiving Daily Kindle Review emails from Glasp.

Here’s the example:

If you click Share highlight in the email, you can share it directly on X (Twitter).

Also, click the book title in the email to open the Top Highlights page.

Your Kindle highlights shouldn’t stay buried in your library.

With Glasp’s Daily Kindle Review, you can turn the passages you’ve already highlighted into a daily habit — bringing your best ideas back to you automatically, every morning.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start making the most of everything you’ve read.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡 Pro Tips

Go further with these resources:

👉 How to Download Highlights and Notes from Kindle — Export all your Kindle highlights as TXT, CSV, or Markdown, or send them directly to Notion, Obsidian, and more

👉 How to Import Kindle Highlights into NotebookLM with Glasp — Use your Kindle highlights as sources for AI-powered research and insights

👉 How to Auto-Export Glasp Highlights with Zapier — Automatically send highlights to Slack, Google Sheets, and more

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

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AI can now answer any question in seconds. It can summarize a field of study you’ve spent years in, simulate expertise, and produce polished outputs on demand. So here’s an honest question: if AI can do the thinking for you, why bother sharing your own?

We’ve been thinking about this a lot at Glasp — a company built on the belief that your highlights and your learning process don’t just belong to you. They belong to the people who come after you. And the more AI flattens the surface of knowledge, the more we keep coming back to the same answer.

Learning in public isn’t just a content strategy. It’s the way knowledge has always compounded across generations.

Save to Glasp

“You Already Know That You Will Never Be Done Learning.”

Shawn Wang — known as swyx — wrote this at the top of what became one of the most widely shared essays in developer culture. The essay was called Learn in Public, and its premise was deceptively simple: most people learn in private, and lurk.

They consume. They take notes nobody else sees. They accumulate expertise that vanishes with them.

swyx’s alternative wasn’t complicated. Write blogs. Post your questions publicly. Make tutorials. Speak at meetups. Leave comments. Build a visible record of what you’re figuring out — not a polished portfolio, but a live journal of your curiosity. He called this learning exhaust: the byproduct of learning that, if shared, becomes fuel for everyone else.

The insight wasn’t just philosophical. It was strategic. The relative rarity of people who actually do this means that joining that group makes you stand out immediately. Mentors find you. Opportunities appear. The people who care about what you’re learning come to you, because you’ve made it possible for them to find you at all.

As swyx put it: “You can learn so much on the Internet, for the low, low price of your ego.”

→ Explore swyx’s writing on Glasp

The Serendipity Vehicle

David Perell gave this dynamic a name that stuck: the Serendipity Vehicle.

When you publish your learning online — a blog post, a thread, a newsletter, a highlighted passage with your annotation — you’re not just sharing information. You’re building a signal. And that signal travels to people you’ll never meet, in places you’ll never go, at hours when you’re asleep.

“You put out a signal,” Perell describes, “and it’s as if thousands of little minions, who work 24/7, carry your ideas to people who think like you and are interested in the same things you are.”

The result isn’t just more followers. It’s more aligned people. It’s the collaborator you didn’t know existed. The introduction you couldn’t have manufactured. The opportunity that came through a stranger who read something you wrote two years ago and only now reached out.

This is why learning in public isn’t self-promotion in the conventional sense. You’re not broadcasting to impress. You’re tuning a frequency — and letting the internet deliver you to the people most likely to resonate with it.

The same thing, by the way, is true for non-technical people. Patrick O'Shaughnessy — investor and host of Invest Like the Best — built his understanding of industries he didn't yet know (tech, energy, consumer) by inviting experts onto his podcast and thinking out loud in public. He never claimed to be the expert in the room. The podcast was the learning process, made visible.

Show Your Work: Process Over Product

Austin Kleon made the same case for creatives in his book Show Your Work!, and it applies far beyond the art world.

The conventional instinct is to hide your work until it’s finished — to only share once you have something polished enough to be proud of. Kleon’s argument is the opposite: the process is the interesting part. Most people never see behind the scenes of how ideas develop. When you let them in, you become more than a source of information. You become someone they’re rooting for.

“Think about what you want to learn,” Kleon writes, “and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.”

That commitment does two things. It keeps you accountable — it’s harder to quit when other people are watching. And it attracts your peers. Not the audience you imagined, but the actual people who care about the same questions you’re sitting with right now.

Kleon calls these people your knuckleballers — the fellow practitioners who find you because you were findable. You couldn’t have found them any other way.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants — and Leaving a Ladder

Isaac Newton’s most famous line has always been about humility: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” But there’s a responsibility embedded in it that we rarely talk about.

If the knowledge that got us here was passed down — from generation to generation, through books and letters and now through the open web — then we are the beneficiaries of everyone who chose to share rather than hoard.

The question isn’t just: what can I learn? It’s: what am I contributing to what comes next?

When you publish your learning process, when you annotate what you read, when you share the questions you’re working through, you’re not just building your own career. You’re building a resource that future learners — people who don’t exist yet — will be able to discover and learn from.

This is the principle Glasp was built on: to democratize access to other people’s learning and the experiences they’ve collected throughout their lives. Not just the conclusions, but the journey. The highlights, the annotations, the “I don’t understand this yet, but here’s where I’m starting.”

The rule of 1:9:90 — 1% of people create, 9% curate, 90% consume — isn’t inevitable. It’s a default. And every person who makes even a small part of their learning visible shifts that ratio slightly, for everyone.

What Stops Most People

It’s worth being honest about the friction. Learning in public requires something that doesn’t feel natural for most people: being wrong, in front of others, on purpose.

Not accidentally wrong. Deliberately wrong-for-now, in the process of figuring something out.

swyx’s advice here is blunt: “Try your best to be right, but don’t worry when you’re wrong. A much better strategy is getting really good at recovering from being wrong.” The pace of your learning matters more than your batting average on any given post.

The other barrier is the blank-page problem. Most people don’t know where to start because they’re waiting until they have something important enough to say. But that threshold never arrives — or it arrives so rarely that the habit never forms.

The solution isn’t a burst of ambition. It’s a very small consistent act. Share one thing you learned today. One passage that made you think. One question you don’t have the answer to yet. The audience for that is larger than you think — and the act of sharing it will clarify your own thinking in ways that private notes never will.

How Glasp Fits In

This is where Glasp’s design philosophy comes from.

We built Glasp as the lowest-friction version of learning in public: highlight something, and it’s already shared. Not a blog post. Not a thread. Just the moment of genuine intellectual contact — the sentence that stopped you, the passage you reread twice.

That highlight is your footprint. It’s public. It’s searchable. It’s something the person learning after you can discover, not in a generic search result, but in the context of what a real person found worth saving.

Over time, your Glasp profile becomes exactly what the original idea of learning in public was meant to create: a visible record of your intellectual journey. Not curated for performance. Not polished for an audience. Just honest documentation of what you found worth your attention.

When someone discovers your profile because their curiosity overlaps with yours, that’s the Serendipity Vehicle working. When your highlights show up in someone’s research months after you made them, that’s the shoulder of the giant — without you having to do anything more.

The Glasp Take: The Learning You Don’t Share Disappears

In the age of AI, here’s what changes — and what doesn’t.

AI can generate knowledge. It cannot generate your process of acquiring it. Your questions, your confusions, your “I didn’t understand this until I saw it this way” moments are not replicable by a model trained on someone else’s data.

What you share publicly is the only version of your learning that has any chance of outlasting you.

swyx put it simply: learning in public is the fastest way to build expertise, network, and knowledge. We’d add one thing: it’s also the most generous. Because every time you make your learning visible, you make it slightly easier for the next person to figure out what you figured out.

That’s not a small thing. That’s how knowledge has always worked.

So: what are you learning right now that you haven’t shared yet? Start there.

→ Browse what people are highlighting on Glasp

→ Start highlighting the web with Glasp

What’s something you learned recently that you almost didn’t share — and what held you back? Leave a comment. We read every one.

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Start highlighting the web with Glasp

We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to Auto-Export Highlights with Zapier

With this workflow, you can automatically export your Glasp highlights — including web articles, PDFs, and YouTube transcripts — to any app you use, without copying and pasting manually.

Whether it’s team updates, personal knowledge bases, or content workflows, Glasp + Zapier lets you:

• Automatically fetch new highlights from your Glasp account on a schedule

• Send highlights to Slack channels for team visibility

• Export to Google Sheets for tracking and analysis

• Post to Discord for community sharing

• Receive highlights by email via Gmail

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to set up the Zap, configure your Glasp API credentials, and connect your favorite destinations — so your highlights flow automatically into the tools you already use.

🪄 How It Works

Let’s walk through how to set it up in just a few steps 👇

Step 1: Sign Up for Glasp

Choose your preferred browser, such as Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, or Microsoft Edge.

In your browser’s address bar, type glasp.co and you’ll be taken directly to Glasp’s website. You can also access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp — Social Web Highlighter

Once you’re on the site, click Sign up and continue with your Google account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, you will be taken to welcome page.

Step 2: Go to Zapier

First, open the Glasp integration page on Zapier. If you don’t have a Zapier account yet, you can create one for free — the free plan supports up to 100 tasks per month, which is enough for most personal workflows.

You’ll see a set of pre-built templates for connecting Glasp with popular apps like Slack, Discord, and Google Sheets.

Click “Connect Glasp to 8,000 apps” to open the Zap editor.

Once the editor opens, you’ll see the Zap with a single step: a Glasp trigger.

Step 3: Get Your Glasp Access Token

To connect Zapier with Glasp, you’ll need your personal API access token.

Once you’ve signed up for Glasp, go to Glasp Access Token page. Click Generate if you haven’t created one yet, or copy your existing token.

Back in Zapier, paste your token into the API Key field when prompted to connect your Glasp account.

💡 Keep your access token private. Don’t share it publicly or commit it to a public repository.

Step 4: Test the trigger

After connecting your Glasp account, Zapier will ask you to test the trigger. This step verifies that Zapier can successfully fetch your highlights from Glasp’s API.

In the trigger setup, select “New Document“ as the trigger event and click “Continue.”

Click "Test trigger" and wait a few seconds. Zapier will pull in your most recent highlights as sample data. You should see your highlight text, the source URL, page title, tags, and any notes you've added.

If the test fails, double-check that:

• Your access token is correct (go back to Step 2 and regenerate if needed)

• You have at least one highlight saved in your Glasp account

Once the test successfully finishes, click “Continue with selected record.” This tells Zapier to use this highlight as sample data for configuring the next step — your destination app.

Step 5: Connect Your Destination

Now add an action step — the app where your highlights will be sent. Click the “+” button below the trigger, search for your destination app, and select it.

Choose your destination app and follow the example below. If your app isn’t listed here, the setup process is similar — select your app, connect your account, and map the Glasp data fields.

Below are setup instructions for the most popular destinations.

Example: Slack

After selecting Slack, choose “Send Channel Message” as an action event. Then, click “Sign in” to connect to Slack.

A Slack authorization window will appear. Select your workspace and click "Allow" to grant Zapier access.

Connect your Slack workspace and choose which channel should receive your highlights. You can map the Glasp data fields to your Slack message format:

• Channel: Select the channel (e.g., #highlights or #reading-notes)

• Message Text: Map the highlight text, page title, and URL from the trigger data

For example, you could format your message as:

📌 * [title]*

Highlights Text (combined)

🔗 < [URL] | Original Article >

🟢 < [Glasp URL] | Open in Glasp >

You can also customize how the message appears in Slack. Scroll down in the configuration panel to find these optional settings:

• Bot Name: Change this to “Glasp” (or any name you prefer) so you can easily identify highlight notifications in your channel.

• Bot Icon: Paste the Glasp logo URL to give the bot a recognizable icon:https://storage.googleapis.com/glasp.co/src/img/glasp_logo.png

• Auto-Expand Links: Set to Yes so that URLs in your highlights automatically show a preview in Slack.

The rest of the settings can be left as default. Click “Continue” to proceed to testing.

After configuring the message fields, click “Continue” to move to the Test tab. Click “Test step” to send a test message to your Slack channel. Zapier will send a real message using your most recent Glasp highlight data.

If the test succeeds, you’ll see “A Message was sent to Slack” with the output data showing your channel ID and message content. Go to your Slack channel and confirm the message was delivered correctly.

Example: Google Sheet

Select Google Sheets as the action app, then choose “Create Spreadsheet Row” as the action event. This adds a new row to your spreadsheet for each Glasp highlight. Click “Sign in” to connect your Google account.

After signing in, select the spreadsheet and worksheet where you want highlights saved. Before configuring the action in Zapier, create a new Google Spreadsheet with column headers in the first row. Zapier will automatically detect these headers as fields. You can use any column names you like — here's an example:

Then go back to Zapier and select your spreadsheet and worksheet. Zapier automatically detects the column headers as fields. Click the “+” button next to each field to map it to the corresponding Glasp data:

• Title → Title

• Highlight → Highlights Text (combined)

• URL → URL

• Tags → Tags

• Date → Created At

Click "Continue" and then "Test step" to send a test row to your spreadsheet. If your test is successful, you can see the sheet populated with your Glasp highlight data like below:

Then proceed to Step 6 to publish your Zap.

Example: Discord

Select Discord as the action app, then choose “Send Channel Message” as the action event. Click “Sign in” to connect your Discord account.

A Discord authorization window will appear. Select your server, review the permissions, and click "Authorize" to grant Zapier access.

Once connected, configure the message:

• Channel: Select the channel where you want highlights posted (e.g., glasp-discord)

• Message Text: Click the “+” button to map Glasp data fields. You can include the original article URL and Glasp URL for easy access to both the source and your highlights.

• Bot Name: Set to “Glasp”

Click "Continue" and then "Test step" to send a test message to your Discord channel. Confirm it looks correct, then proceed to Step 6 to publish.

Example: Gmail

Select Gmail as the action app, then choose “Send Email” as the action event. Click “Sign in” to connect your Google account.

Once connected, configure the email. The key fields are:

• To: Your own email address (or anyone you want to receive the highlights)

• From Name: Set to “Glasp” so you can easily identify these emails in your inbox

• Subject: Map to the page title from Glasp (e.g., New Highlight: {Title})

• Body Type: Select Plain for simple text, or HTML if you want formatted emails

• Body: Click the “+” button to map Glasp data fields. For example:

The other settings (Cc, Bcc, Attachments, Signature) can be left as default. Click “Continue” and then “Test step” to send a test email.

Tip: Set up a Gmail filter to automatically label these emails (e.g., “Glasp Highlights”) to keep them organized in your inbox.

Step 6: Publish the Workflow

If the test is successful, click “Publish” to activate your Zap. You’ll see a confirmation: “Your Zap is live!”

From now on, Zapier will automatically check for new Glasp highlights on a schedule (every 1 to 15 minutes, depending on your plan) and send them to your destination app. You can monitor your Zap’s activity and task history in the Zapier dashboard.

You’ll see a confirmation: “Success! Your Zap is live!” Your Zap will now run automatically every time a new highlight is saved in Glasp.

Zapier checks for new highlights on a schedule (every 1 to 15 minutes, depending on your plan). You can monitor your Zap's activity and task history in the Zapier dashboard.

Your highlights shouldn’t stay siloed in one tool.

With Glasp + Zapier, you can automatically route your reading insights to Slack, Google Sheets, Discord, Gmail, or any of Zapier’s 8,000+ integrations — turning passive highlighting into an active knowledge workflow.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start building knowledge from everything you consume.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡 Pro Tips

Go further with these resources:

👉 How to Auto-Export Glasp Highlights with n8n — Open-source alternative to Zapier

👉 How to Export Highlights & Notes to Notion — Manual export tutorial

👉 How to Export Highlights and Notes to Obsidian — Obsidian integration guide

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📖 New Tutorial

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AI can now summarize any book in seconds. It can pull key insights from a 400-page research paper before you’ve had your morning coffee. So here’s an honest question: why read at all?

We’ve been thinking about this a lot at Glasp — a company built on the belief that what you highlight reveals how you think. And the more AI can do for us, the more we keep coming back to the same answer.

Reading isn’t just about getting information. It’s about building the mind that can use it.

Save to Glasp

“The Means of Learning Are Abundant. The Desire to Learn Is Scarce.”

Naval Ravikant said this before AI made it even more true.

In one of the most widely shared conversations on reading ever recorded — his dialogue with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project — Naval argued that the real problem isn’t access to knowledge. It’s the habit of genuinely wanting it.

“The foundation of learning is reading,” he said. “I don’t know a smart person who doesn’t read and read all the time. I probably read one to two hours a day. I think that alone accounts for any material success I’ve had in my life.”

But Naval’s deeper insight isn’t about hours logged. It’s about how to build a reading habit that actually sticks — and it’s simpler than most people expect.

“Read what you love until you love to read.”

Don’t force yourself through books that feel like assignments. Don’t read what you think you should read. Start wherever your genuine curiosity points, follow it, and let it take you somewhere unexpected. Fiction to science fiction. Science fiction to nonfiction. Nonfiction to philosophy. The path doesn’t matter — the motion does.

→ Explore Naval’s full reading philosophy on Glasp

Curious what others found most memorable from Naval’s writing? The Glasp community has highlighted 96 pages from nav.al — you can browse what resonated with them here: nav.al highlights on Glasp

Your Highlights Are a Map of What You Love

Here’s where Glasp fits into this philosophy — and it’s something we’ve come to believe deeply.

Most people don’t know what they love to read. Not really. They know what they think they should love. They know what’s on the bestseller list. They know what their colleagues are reading.

But the sentence that stopped them mid-paragraph last Tuesday? The paragraph they reread three times before moving on? The passage they screenshot and sent to a friend at midnight? That’s the real signal.

Your highlights don’t lie.

When you highlight something — on the web, in a PDF, in a Kindle book — you’re recording a moment of genuine contact with an idea. Not what you thought was impressive. Not what you wanted to seem interested in. What actually caught you.

Over time, your Glasp library becomes something more than a collection of saved text. It becomes a portrait of your intellectual curiosity. A map of what you actually love to read — which, as Naval would argue, is exactly where your learning should begin.

What AI Changes — and What It Doesn’t

AI is genuinely good at surfaces: summaries, key points, quick overviews. If you need to know what a book argues, AI can tell you in thirty seconds.

But Naval’s most important point isn’t about information retrieval. It’s about the compounding effect of a reading habit on how your brain works over years.

When you read deeply — when you follow an argument, sit with a difficult idea, disagree with a paragraph and keep reading anyway — you’re not just consuming content. You’re building mental models that become part of how you see the world. That process can’t be shortcutted.

AI can summarize what Nassim Taleb wrote about risk. It cannot give you the intuition that develops from twenty hours of slow, annotated reading, where you argued back at the margins.

This is the gap AI doesn’t close.

Naval puts it simply: “Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.” The act itself is the point.

One Practical Shift

If you’re thinking about how to protect your reading habit in an AI-saturated world, we’d suggest one small change:

Stop treating AI summaries as a starting point, and start treating your highlights as one.

Before reaching for a summary of a book you’ve already read, pull up your own highlights first. What did you find important? What questions were you asking when you underlined that sentence? That’s your thinking — not an average of everyone else’s.

This is what Daily Highlight Review is designed to do. And it’s why we believe the future of reading isn’t AI replacing books — it’s AI helping you go deeper into them.

The Glasp Take: Read What You Highlight

In the age of AI summaries, we’d offer one reframe on Naval’s advice.

“Read what you love” is right. But if you’re not sure what you love yet — or if your reading has become mechanical, a list to get through — try this:

Read what you highlight.

Go back to your Glasp library. Look at the sentences you actually saved. Ask yourself: what was I thinking when I underlined that? What question was I trying to answer? What idea made me stop?

That’s your map. Follow it.

The highlights you make today become the thread you can pull tomorrow — across books, articles, YouTube videos, and conversations. Glasp exists to make that thread visible, and to make sure it doesn’t get lost.

Because in a world where AI can give anyone the same summary, what you actually found interesting is the only thing that’s uniquely yours.

What’s a book or article you’ve highlighted recently that surprised you — something you didn’t expect to love? Leave a comment, we’re genuinely curious.

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Start highlighting the web with Glasp

We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to Auto-Export Glasp Highlights with n8n

With this workflow, you can automatically export your Glasp highlights to any app you use — without copying and pasting manually.

Using n8n, a powerful open-source workflow automation tool, you can build a fully automated pipeline that fetches your latest highlights from Glasp and sends them wherever you need.

Whether it’s team updates, personal knowledge bases, or content workflows, Glasp + n8n lets you:

• Automatically fetch new highlights from your Glasp account on a schedule

• Send highlights to Slack channels for team visibility

• Push highlights to Notion databases for organized knowledge management

• Export to Google Sheets for tracking and analysis

• Connect to 400+ apps through n8n’s integration library

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to import a ready-to-use workflow, configure your Glasp API credentials, and connect your favorite destinations — so your highlights flow automatically into the tools you already use.

🪄 How It Works

Let’s walk through how to set it up in just a few steps 👇

Step 1: Sign Up for Glasp

Choose your preferred browser, such as Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, or Microsoft Edge.

In your browser’s address bar, type glasp.co and you’ll be taken directly to Glasp’s website. You can also access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp — Social Web Highlighter

Once you’re on the site, click Sign up and continue with your Google account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, you will be taken to welcome page.

Step 2: Get Your Glasp Access Token

To connect n8n with Glasp, you’ll need your personal API access token.

Once you’ve signed up for Glasp, go to Glasp Access Token, where you can get the access token. Click Generate (or copy your existing token)

💡 Keep your access token private. Don't share it publicly or commit it to a public repository.

Step 3: Set Up n8n

If you don’t already have n8n, you can get started in two ways:

• n8n Cloud (hosted): Sign up at n8n.io — no installation needed

• Self-hosted: Run n8n locally with Docker or npm

Once n8n is running, you’re ready to import the workflow.

Step 4: Import the Workflow

The workflow is published as an official n8n template. You can import it with just a few clicks — no need to copy-paste a URL.

1. Go to the Glasp Highlights Export template on n8n

2. Click “Use for free”

3. Choose one of the import options:

   • Copy template to clipboard (JSON) — then paste it into your n8n instance

   • Get started free with n8n cloud — if you don’t have an n8n account yet

   • Open self-hosting installation docs — if you prefer to self-host

If you chose “Copy template to clipboard (JSON)”, go to your n8n instance and press Cmd+V (Mac) or Ctrl+V (Windows). The workflow will be imported automatically.

Once imported, you should see the workflow with four nodes:

Schedule Trigger --> Prepare Parameters --> Glasp API --> Filter & Format

Step 5: Configure Your Credentials

Once the workflow is imported, you need to add your Glasp credentials.

1. Open the Glasp API node (the HTTP Request node)

2. Confirm the settings:

   • Authentication: Generic Credential Type

   • Generic Auth Type: Bearer Auth

3. Click the Bearer Auth dropdown and select "+ Create new credential"

4. In the credential modal, paste your Glasp access token into the Bearer Token field

5. Save the credential

💡 Your access token is stored in n8n’s encrypted Credentials, never in the workflow JSON. Exported doc tracking auto-cleans after 30 days. No secrets in code.

Optional: Adjust the schedule frequency by clicking the Schedule Trigger node. Default: every 6 hours.

Step 6: Test the Workflow

Click Execute Workflow at the bottom of the canvas. If everything is set up correctly, you should see your recent highlights flowing through each node.

The Filter & Format node outputs each document with these fields:

• title -- the article or page title

• url -- the original URL

• highlightsText -- all highlights as plain text

• highlightsMarkdown -- highlights formatted as Markdown

• highlightCount -- number of highlights

• tags, domain, category -- metadata

• highlights[] -- individual highlight objects with text, notes, and colors

Step 7: Add a Destination

Now connect the output to wherever you want your highlights to go. Here are some popular examples:

Example: Notion

1. Add a Notion node --> Create Database Page

2. Connect your Notion account

3. Select your database

4. Map the fields:

• Title: {{ $json.title }}

• URL: {{ $json.url }}

• Highlights (as a Block): {{ $json.highlightsText }}

Make sure to add the n8n integration to your Notion database (Database ... menu --> Connections --> add your integration).

Example: Slack

1. Add a Slack node --> Send Message

2. Connect your Slack account

3. Select your channel

4. Set Message Text:

{{ $json.title }}

{{ $json.url }}

{{ $json.highlightCount }} highlights

{{ $json.highlightsText }}

Example: Google Sheets

1. Add a Google Sheets node --> Append Row

2. Connect your Google account

3. Select your spreadsheet

4. Map columns: title, url, domain, highlightCount, highlightsText, createdAt

Example: Webhook / Custom API

1. Add an HTTP Request node

2. Set method to POST

3. Enter your webhook URL

4. Send {{ $json }} as JSON body

Step 8: Activate the Workflow

Once you’ve tested everything and connected your destination, click Publish (top-right). The workflow is now active and will run automatically every 6 hours. You can change the frequency by clicking the Schedule Trigger node.

The Schedule Trigger node runs at your set interval (e.g., daily, hourly) and automatically exports any new highlights.

(Optional) Step 9: Customize the Schedule

By default, the workflow runs every six hour. To change the frequency:

1. Double-click the Schedule Trigger node

2. Adjust the interval (e.g., every hour, every week, specific time)

3. Save and reactivate the workflow

Your highlights shouldn’t stay siloed in one tool.

With Glasp + n8n, you can automatically route your reading insights to Slack, Notion, Google Sheets, or any of n8n’s 400+ integrations — turning passive highlighting into an active knowledge workflow.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start building knowledge from everything you consume.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡 Pro Tips

Go further with these resources:

👉 Glasp Highlights n8n Workflow — GitHub Repository — Source code, documentation, and workflow JSON

👉 How to Export Highlights & Notes to Notion — Manual export tutorial

👉 How to Export Highlights and Notes to Obsidian — Obsidian integration guide

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

Sponsor an Edition

Subscribe to Glasp

Subscribe now

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

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I’m Bobby Powers, and I run the Leader & Learner publication, where I write two posts per week that will help you become a more curious leader and learner.

For the past decade, I’ve been reading at least 70 books per year (mostly nonfiction), and I’ve gotten to share what I’m learning with over 1 million readers online.

One of the most impactful concepts I’ve learned from my reading is the philosophy of Stoicism. I now view it as one of the core operating systems of my life, and you’ll begin to see why in this post.

What Is Stoicism?

The school of Stoic philosophy was founded in Greece by Zeno around 300 B.C. It’s centered around four cardinal virtues (wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage), and one of the core tenets of Stoic thought is to differentiate between what you can and can’t control in life, then focus entirely on the former.

Stoicism has guided titans of history ever since, including George Washington, Montaigne, Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Teddy Roosevelt.

But its prominence surged recently due to authors like Ryan Holiday and proponents like Tim Ferriss, Arianna Huffington, and General James Mattis.

“Stoicism is a fantastic operating system for thriving in high-stress environments.” -Tim Ferriss

I’ve been reading about Stoicism for the past 10 years. I’ve read the foundational texts as well as modern-day ones, so friends often ask me for recommendations to learn more about this ancient school of philosophy that has helped millions of people.

If you’ve heard people mention Stoicism but you’ve always wondered what it’s all about, this list will help you get started. I’ve structured these seven books in order of when I think you should read each book, based on approachability, length, and impact.

Book #1 — The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday

When It Was Written: 2014

Why You Should Read It: The Obstacle Is the Way is the best gateway drug to Stoicism. It’s a lean 200 pages, and Holiday’s writing is full of stories and pithy quotes. Plus, this book kicked off the modern-day Stoic movement. After it was published, several prominent sports teams like the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots said the book had a huge impact on their success, which prompted tons more people to read it.

What to Expect: Lots of short chapters full of anecdotes from throughout history (including business, art, and athletics)

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: One of the most important life lessons anyone can learn is to focus on what you can control and not worry about what you can’t. That concept lives at the core of Stoicism, and it’s a useful mindset for approaching any challenge. As a few examples of what we can and can’t control:

• Controllable: Work ethic, preparation, mentality, how you rebound after failure

• Uncontrollable: Others’ actions, emotions, opinions, etc.

Two Passages I Loved:

“It’s not just: How can I think this is not so bad? No, it is how to will yourself to see that this must be good—an opportunity to gain a new foothold, move forward, or go in a better direction. Not ‘be positive’ but learn to be ceaselessly creative and opportunistic.

Not: This is not so bad.
But: I can make this good.”
-Ryan Holiday

“Just because the conditions aren’t exactly to your liking, or you don’t feel ready yet, doesn’t mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.” -Ryan Holiday

Book #2 — The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth

When It Was Written: 2018

Why You Should Read It: The Practicing Stoic is a fantastic overview of Stoic thought. In this philosophical primer, law professor and former dean Ward Farnsworth provides a smattering of quotes and insights from Stoics throughout history.

What to Expect: Every chapter explains how the Stoics approach a different topic, like death, wealth, emotion, adversity, etc. Farnsworth briefly frames each topic, then the rest of each chapter contains passages from Stoic thinkers. He includes insights from the “Big Three” in Stoicism (Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius) as well as other more modern Stoics (Samuel Johnson, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Emerson, etc.)

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: When we are upset, we have no one to blame but ourselves. I’m in charge of my own emotions, and you’re in charge of yours. If you wrong me, I get to decide how to respond. I can choose whether or not I want to feel “harmed” by what you did.

Two Passages I Loved:

“Nothing is heavy if we take it lightly; nothing need provoke anger if one does not add one’s anger to it.” -Seneca

“There is no difference, so far as contentment is concerned, between having something and not caring whether you have it. The second route is often easier.”
-Ward Farnsworth

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Book #3 — On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

*Note: I read the translation by C. D. N. Costa, which was excellent. That’s also the translation recommended by Ryan Holiday and his team at The Daily Stoic.

When It Was Written: Roughly AD 49

Why You Should Read It: In terms of insights per page, On the Shortness of Life may be the best ROI you’ll ever get. It’s a slim 100 pages, and it reframed the way I think about life, death, productivity, prosperity, and mental health. Seneca’s1 other books like Letters from a Stoic are also amazing, but much longer and denser. Start here, get your feet wet, then dive into the deep end with some of Seneca’s other work.

What to Expect: On the Shortness of Life is chock full of quotes that could keep your Twitter or Instagram account buzzing for days. (Btw, here’s a long list of my favorite quotes from the book.) Seneca is one of history’s deepest thinkers, and he’ll prompt you to consider what you’re doing with your life.

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: It helped me re-evaluate where I’m spending my time and what I’m allowing into my head. Am I focused on the right things? How much time am I spending on what’s most important to me? Am I allowing myself to get anxious about things that don’t matter?

Two Passages I Loved:

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.” -Seneca

“I imagine many people could have achieved wisdom if they had not imagined they had already achieved it.” -Seneca

Book #4 — Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

*Note: Get the translation by Gregory Hays. In ancient books like this, translations can be the difference between a book that’s easy to understand and one you don’t want to finish.

When It Was Written: Roughly AD 161-180

Why You Should Read It: Marcus Aurelius kept a journal when he was the Roman Emperor. It’s not often we get to take a peek into the pages of a powerful person’s diary, and that’s exactly what this is. He didn’t intend for it to be published, and it’s a fascinating look into the types of things he reminded himself every day.

What to Expect: Even though this book was written 2,000 years ago, it reads easily. I enjoyed it enough that I’ve already read it a couple of times, and I’ll continue to revisit it throughout my life. Meditations is full of little things Marcus was trying to improve in his mental life: equanimity, work ethic, perseverance, etc.

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: Marcus realized that humans are inherently lazy, so he did everything in his power to notice negative traits in himself and work to overcome them. If one of the most powerful men in history had to remind himself of little mantras and principles, I need to do the same.

Two Passages I Loved:

“Our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts.” -Marcus Aurelius

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” -Marcus Aurelius

Book #5 — The Art of Living by Epictetus (A new interpretation by Sharon Lebell)

When It Was Written: 1994, based on Epictetus’s work from roughly AD 125

Why You Should Read It: The Art of Living is another 100-page book that punches way above its weight class. If you’re not sure you want to dive fully into Epictetus’s larger work yet2, this is a great stepping stone.

What to Expect: Short chapters full of memorable wisdom. This is a modern interpretation that’s largely pulled from Epictetus’s The Enchiridion. It’s not a direct translation. Lebell took Epictetus’s insights and shaped them into a powerful and eminently readable little book.

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: There’s a difference between what happened and your interpretation of what happened. All events are neutral, even things like losing a job or breaking an arm. We get to determine how we respond to that neutral event, and that response can lead to either positive or negative outcomes in our lives. (Shockingly, I’ve found this to be true in my own life, such as losing a job only to later find a better one.)

Two Passages I Loved:

“When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it. What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.” -Epictetus (interpreted by Sharon Lebell)

“It is always our choice whether or not we wish to pay the price for life’s rewards.”
-Epictetus (interpreted by Sharon Lebell)

Book #6 — Discourses by Epictetus

When It Was Written: Roughly AD 108

Why You Should Read It: Discourses is the main surviving work of Epictetus (and the version I’ve linked here also contains his smaller manual The Enchiridion). Epictetus’s life proves that Stoicism can be used by anyone in any situation. Unlike others on this list like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, Epictetus wasn’t rich and powerful. He was born into slavery and—even after he was freed—lived a life of simplicity.

What to Expect: The book is laid out in a series of numbered passages, and each contains a short lesson. It’s slightly harder to read than Meditations, but still quite approachable considering it was written shortly after Jesus walked the Earth.

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: Not only is every event neutral, but it’s possible to benefit (at least in a small way) from anything that happens in life. Epictetus says, “Everything, you see, that you throw at me I will transform into a blessing, a boon—something dignified, even enviable.” Even though they can really suck, challenges develop us into stronger people.

Two Passages I Loved:

“So is it possible to benefit from these circumstances? Yes, from every circumstance, even abuse and slander. A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner—and my accuser is my sparring partner. He trains me in patience, civility and even temper.” -Epictetus

“We forever compound our problems and make our situations out to be worse than they actually are. So, for instance, whenever I’m on board ship and gaze into the deep, or look around me and see nothing but ocean, I’m gripped by terror, imagining that if we wreck I will have to swallow all this sea. It doesn’t occur to me that around three pints will about do me in. So is it the sea that terrifies me? No, it is my imagination.” -Epictetus

Book #7 — Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

When It Was Written: Roughly AD 63-65

Why You Should Read It: Letters from a Stoic is one of the three foundational texts of Stoicism, and it’s packed with insights on how to live a better life. The book is written as a series of letters from Seneca to his friend Lucilius, talking him through how to approach various problems in life.

What to Expect: This is the densest book on the list. I loved it and learned countless insights, but it was still a tough book to finish because it’s long and meaty, which is why I put it last on this list. It’s definitely worth your time, but work your way up to it.

The Biggest Lesson I Learned: Don’t allow the future to torture you. We can’t control the future (or the past), so the better part of wisdom is learning how to live 100 percent in the present. That’s easy to say and difficult to do. It requires mental exercise, which Seneca details in this book.

Two Passages I Loved:

“The present alone can make no man wretched.” -Seneca

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” -Seneca

One Final Note

There are three foundational books of Stoicism:

• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• Discourses (and Enchiridion) by Epictetus

I included all three above, but I’ve also included more recent books because I’ve noticed that some people are apprehensive of diving straight into a 2,000-year-old book of philosophy. Plus, the newer books do a good job of building on this old school of Stoic wisdom.

None of the foundational books is as crazy difficult as David Foster Wallace or James Joyce. They’re all fairly approachable. However, many readers may enjoy dipping their toes in the water by first reading the books I’ve outlined above.

I hope you enjoy these great books. Each one includes an affiliate link from Bookshop.org. (If you buy one, you’ll support me as well as local bookstores. Win-win!)

If you’re interested in receiving two posts per week with book recs and personal development tips, I’d be honored for you to subscribe to Leader & Learner.

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Bobby Powers:

  Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries, revealing their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, Bobby Powers, is a dedicated learner passionate about leadership and personal development. With over a decade of experience managing teams, leading onboarding, and Learning and Development programs at various startups and SMBs, Bobby is also an avid reader, having read over a thousand books in the last 15 years.

  ✨ Want a concise summary before diving in? Install the YouTube Summary with ChatGPT extension by Glasp for instant video summaries!

  

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We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to Transcribe Audio Files & Turn Them Into Searchable Knowledge

With this feature, you can upload audio files directly to Glasp, automatically generate transcripts, highlight key moments, and organize spoken content just like articles or PDFs.

Beyond transcription, Glasp helps you turn audio into reusable knowledge you can search, annotate, and connect across your tools.

Whether it’s podcasts, interviews, meetings, lectures, or voice memos, Glasp lets you:

• Automatically generate accurate transcripts from audio files

• Highlight key insights and add notes directly to transcripts

• Organize and tag spoken ideas for future reference

• Search only the important parts by focusing on your highlights

• Reuse transcript highlights across your knowledge workflow

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to upload audio files, generate transcripts, highlight important ideas, and turn spoken content into structured knowledge — so you can spend less time replaying audio and more time thinking.

🪄 How It Works

Let’s walk through how to set it up in just a few steps 👇

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Choose your preferred browser, such as Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, or Microsoft Edge.

In your browser’s address bar, type glasp.co and you’ll be taken directly to Glasp’s website. You can also access it using the link below.

👉 Glasp - Audio Transcriber

Once you’re on the site, click Sign up and continue with your Google account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, you will be taken to welcome page.

Step 2: Go to Your Glasp Dashboard (Profile Page)

Once you’ve signed up for Glasp, go to Glasp – Audio Transcriber and click “Dashboard.”

This will take you to your Glasp dashboard (your profile page), where you can upload audio files and manage your transcripts.

This will take you to your profile page. From there, click the + button in the left sidebar.

Step 3: Start a New Audio Transcription

Once you’re on your Glasp dashboard (profile page), click the “+” button in the left sidebar and select “Audio Transcription.”

This will open the upload screen where you can add your audio file.

Drag and drop your audio file into the upload area, or click “Select File.”

Once the file is added, click “Upload Audio File” to start the transcription.

Glasp automatically detects the language of your audio file, so you don’t need to manually select it. (You can still choose a language if you prefer.)

Click “Upload Audio File” to begin uploading.

Once the file is uploaded, Glasp will start generating the transcript automatically.
Depending on the length of the audio, this may take a few minutes.

When the transcript is ready, you’ll see the summary and full transcript on your audio page.

Step 4: View and Use Your Transcript

Once the transcription is complete, you’ll see the full transcript on your audio page.

From there, you can:

• Highlight key sentences

• Add notes to important moments

• Generate an AI summary

• Copy the transcript with one click

• Download it as .srt or .mp4

Your audio is now fully searchable and reusable.

Highlight the Transcript with Glasp

Simply select a sentence and choose a highlight color from the popup.

Your highlight will be saved to your Glasp profile — just like web articles or PDFs.

Add a Note to the Transcript

Select a sentence in the transcript and click the note icon in the popup.

A note window will appear where you can write your thoughts, insights, or summaries.
Click “Save” to attach your note to that highlighted section.

Copy the Transcript

Click “Copy” to copy the entire transcript with one click. You can paste it into Notion, Google Docs, Obsidian, or anywhere you work.

Play the Audio

Use the built-in audio player to listen directly from the transcript page. You can change the playback speed, skip ahead, or adjust the volume as needed.

Summarize the Transcript

Click “+ Summarize” to instantly generate an AI-powered summary of your transcript. This helps you quickly grasp the key ideas without rereading the entire conversation.

Once the AI finishes generating the summary, it will appear at the top of the page.

The summary includes key sections and timestamps, so you can quickly understand the main ideas at a glance.

Download or Repurpose Your Content

Click “Download” to choose how you’d like to export your content.

You can:

• Download the transcript as an .srt file

• Download the original audio file (.m4a)

• Generate a short audio video (~3 minutes) for easy sharing

(Optional) Step 5: Edit the Title

To rename your audio file, click the three dots (⋯) in the top right corner and select “Edit Title.”

Enter a new title and click “OK” to save your changes.

(Optional) Step 6: Share Your Transcript

Audio files are saved privately by default.

If you’d like to share your transcript, switch the visibility to Public and use the generated link to send it to your team, audience, or collaborators.

(Optional) Step 7: Delete the Audio File

Click the three dots (⋯) next to the title and choose “Delete.” Once confirmed, the audio file and transcript will be permanently removed.

Audio shouldn’t disappear after you press play.

With Glasp, you can transcribe, highlight, annotate, summarize, and repurpose your audio — making every conversation part of your long-term knowledge system.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start building knowledge from everything you consume — including audio.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡Pro Tips

Turn your recordings into searchable transcripts, summaries, and publish-ready content with Glasp.

Go further with these tutorials:

👉 How to Create a Q&A-Style Article from an Audio File Using Glasp
👉 How to Transcribe an iPhone Voice Memo with Glasp

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

Sponsor an Edition

Subscribe to Glasp

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“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.”

― Confucius

Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

📚 3 Good Recommendations

Two kinds of AI users are emerging. The gap between them is astonishing.
by Martin Alderson (6 mins)

• Summary: The author argues that AI users are splitting into two groups: advanced “power users” who integrate AI agents, coding tools, and APIs into real workflows (often even if they’re non-technical), and basic users who only use chat-style tools. This gap is creating major productivity differences across individuals and organizations.

• Ideal for: Business leaders, operators, and knowledge workers interested in how AI adoption actually drives competitive advantage — especially those thinking about enterprise AI strategy, tooling, and workflow transformation.

• Why It’s Worth Your Time: The essay explains why many enterprises are falling behind (locked IT environments, weak bundled tools, lack of APIs) while small teams move fast with AI agents and programming ecosystems — offering a clear lens on how AI may reshape productivity and knowledge work.

Save to Glasp

I miss thinking hard.
by Ernesto Mtz (4 mins)

• Summary: The author reflects on losing opportunities for deep, prolonged thinking as AI accelerates software development. While AI increases output and productivity, it risks starving the part of engineers that grows through struggling with hard problems, creating tension between efficiency (Builder) and intellectual challenge (Thinker).

• Ideal for: Developers, engineers, and technical professionals navigating AI-assisted workflows who are thinking about how automation affects skill growth, creativity, and long-term mastery.

• Why It’s Worth Your Time: The essay offers a thoughtful perspective on the psychological and professional tradeoffs of AI-assisted work — highlighting the risk of over-optimizing for speed and “good enough” solutions at the expense of deep learning and problem-solving satisfaction.

Save to Glasp

How to Reclaim Your Life From Work
by Simone Stolzoff (8 mins)

• Summary: The talk argues that modern society over-identifies people with their jobs, which contributes to burnout and an unhealthy relationship with work. Instead, we should see work as just one part of who we are. Building a healthier life requires diversifying our identity across relationships, hobbies, communities, and personal interests — not just professional output.

• Ideal for: Professionals, knowledge workers, and high-achievers who struggle with work-life boundaries, feel pressure to tie self-worth to career success, or want practical ways to build a more balanced, resilient identity outside of work.

• Why It’s Worth Your Time: The talk provides a practical framework: create “time sanctuaries” where work is not allowed, actively invest in non-work identities through small consistent activities, and join communities that value you beyond your job. It explains how this improves well-being, creativity, resilience during career shocks, and overall life meaning.

Save to Glasp

✨ Get quick video summaries with the YouTube Summary with ChatGPT

📣 Community

• 🟩 Thank You — 2M Installs on the YouTube Summary Extension
  Thanks to our amazing community, the YouTube Summary Extension has reached 2 million installs. We’re honored to support your learning, research, and knowledge workflows every day.

  

• 🟥 50,000+ Audio Files Transcribed:
  Our Audio Transcriber has now processed over 50,000 audio files. We’re excited to see how the community is using Glasp to capture insights from conversations, lectures, and recordings.

• 🟨 30,000+ PDFs Uploaded & HighlightedPDF:
  More than 30,000 PDFs have been uploaded and highlighted on Glasp. We’re excited to see how the community is using Glasp to organize research, study materials, and important documents.

• 🟦 Glasp Talk with Chris Yeh:

  Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries who reveal their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, , is entrepreneur, investor, and co-author of the bestselling book Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman. Chris is a founding partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University, and shares key lessons from his 15-year collaboration with Reid Hoffman.

❤️ Gratitude

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• 🚀 Stop Wasting Time: The AI Browser Plugins That Actually Changed My Productivity in 2026 on

  

• How to Add AI to Your App on Designli

  

• Best AI Tools for Students to Use in 2026: Top 10 Picks on Analytics Insight

  

• AI-Powered Tools for Beginners and Experts on InUnison

  

• ✪ I Migliori Strumenti di Curation per Chi Inizia - #74 – TRUST-able (✪ The Best Curation Tools for Beginners - #74 – TRUST-able) on

  

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: Highlight & Summarize Local PDF Files with Glasp

With this feature, you can upload your local PDF files directly to Glasp, highlight important passages as you read, and instantly generate AI-powered summaries. Beyond highlighting, Glasp helps you turn PDFs into reusable knowledge you can search, organize, and reuse across your tools.

Whether it’s research papers, reports, essays, or internal documents, Glasp lets you:

• Highlight key passages and add notes while reading PDFs

• Generate AI summaries to quickly grasp the main ideas

• Export selected PDF highlights to Notion for structured databases and projects

• Copy highlights into Obsidian to build long-term Markdown-based knowledge

• Search only the important parts of PDFs by focusing on your highlights, not entire files

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to upload PDFs, highlight key ideas, summarize them step by step, and reuse your highlights — so you can spend less time managing files and more time thinking.

Note: This tutorial was originally published on Glasp. Please refer to the original article for the latest updates.

🪄 How It Works

Let’s walk through how to set it up in just a few steps 👇

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Choose your preferred browser, such as Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, or Microsoft Edge.

In your browser’s address bar, type glasp.co and you’ll be taken directly to Glasp’s website. You can also access it using the link below.

👉 Glasp - PDF Highlighter

Once you’re on the site, click Sign up (beta) and continue with your Google account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, you will be redirected to the Chrome Web Store.

Step 2: Install the Glasp extension to your browser

Click Add to Chrome to install the Glasp extension.

👉 Glasp — Chrome Web Store

👉 Glasp — Safari Web Store

After installing the extension, make sure to pin it to your toolbar. This makes it easier to open Glasp from the sidebar. If you’re prompted to sign in to Glasp in the sidebar, simply sign in with your account.

Step 3: Go to your Glasp profile

Once you’ve installed the Glasp extension and signed in, click the Profile icon in the sidebar to open your profile page.

This will take you to your profile page. From there, click the + button in the left sidebar.

Step 4: Upload a PDF to Glasp

When the upload modal opens, drag and drop your PDF file into the area, or click Select Files to upload it from your device.

Select a PDF file from your computer to upload.

After selecting a PDF file, click Upload PDF Files in the modal. Your PDF will begin uploading to Glasp.

Step 5: Highlight the PDF

Once your PDF is uploaded, you’ll be taken to the page showing your uploaded PDFs.
To highlight text, select any sentence in the PDF. A popup with a four-color palette will appear—click the color you’d like to use.

To view all your highlights, click Highlights in the top-right corner.

You can also add notes to each highlight. Click the pencil icon in the popup to write your note.

Glasp is built around sharing knowledge publicly, so highlights from web content are usually visible to others. However, PDFs you upload and highlight in Glasp are saved privately and are not visible to anyone else.

Step 6: Summarize the PDF

To generate an AI summary of the PDF, click Summarize PDF in the top-right corner.

It may take a few seconds for the summary to appear.

(Optional) Step 7: Delete highlights or PDF

To delete a highlight, click the highlighted text in the PDF. A popup will appear—click the X icon in the color palette to remove the highlight.

To delete an uploaded PDF, go to the page showing all your uploaded PDFs.
Select the PDF, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, and choose Delete.

To delete highlights from your Glasp profile, go to your profile page and select the PDF. Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, then choose Delete to remove the highlights.

Glasp isn’t just for local PDFs. You can also highlight and annotate PDFs hosted on the web, making it easy to capture insights from research papers, reports, and shared documents.

You can then reuse your PDF highlights across your workflow — export selected highlights to Notion, or copy and paste them into Obsidian for long-term knowledge building.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start turning PDFs into connected, reusable knowledge.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡Pro Tips

• Glasp also supports highlighting PDFs hosted on the web. This is perfect for academic papers, public reports, and shared PDF links.

• To get started, check out the tutorial below:

👉 How to Highlight a PDF on Chrome

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

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Save to Glasp

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

We talked:

(1:39) - How does the AI wave compare to past tech revolutions like the internet or mobile?

(5:36) - How has AI changed blitzscaling and startup growth economics?

(12:10) - If everyone uses similar AI agents, what becomes a startup’s moat?

(18:30) - As an investor, what signals suggest a breakout company?

(21:22) - What is the difference between buying AI and adopting AI?

(26:44) - What patterns are emerging in AI product UX?

(31:29) - How can people develop an infinite learning mindset in the AI era?

(40:15) - If starting today, how would you learn AI and plan your career?

(45:21) - What did you learn from working with Reid Hoffman?

(51:04) - What legacy or impact do you want to leave?

Get a quick overview & summary

✨ Want a concise summary before diving in? Install the YouTube Summary with ChatGPT extension by Glasp for instant video summaries!

Highlights

• AI as the Largest Technological Shift and Capability Amplifier
  Chris Yeh describes AI as the most powerful technological wave of his lifetime, exceeding the internet in impact. While the internet connected people and moved activities online, AI fundamentally expands what humans and organizations are capable of doing. From creative work to industrial processes, AI enables entirely new forms of productivity, and we are still only at the very beginning of this transformation.

• Blitzscaling Reimagined Through AI and Smaller Teams
  AI reshapes the foundations of blitzscaling by dramatically increasing individual productivity. With AI agents supporting each person, companies can grow further with far fewer employees, reducing organizational friction and allowing them to stay nimble longer. While the idea of a single person running a billion-dollar company may be overstated, the shift toward much smaller high-impact teams is already happening.

• Context, Adoption, and the Human Edge in the AI Era
  Chris argues that AI models will not provide lasting differentiation as technical advantages erode quickly. Instead, enduring moats come from context understanding customers’ workflows, unstructured data, and real-world decision-making. He warns that many enterprises mistake buying AI for adopting it, falling into pilot purgatory where tools are never truly used. Success requires staying close to real usage while cultivating an infinite learning mindset where creativity, judgment, and human connection grow more valuable.

Key questions & insights

Q: Why does Chris Yeh believe AI is a bigger wave than the internet?

Chris sees AI as transformative, not because it digitizes existing tasks but because it enables actions that were previously impossible. By expanding human capability itself, AI affects nearly every industry and daily activity at a deeper level than prior technologies.

Q: How does AI fundamentally change the idea of blitzscaling?

AI reduces the need for large teams by allowing individuals to accomplish far more. This alleviates traditional hiring and coordination bottlenecks, enabling faster growth while maintaining flexibility and speed for longer periods.

Q: What does Chris consider the most important moat and differentiation strategy for AI startups?

He believes sustainable advantage comes from context rather than models. Companies that deeply understand their customers’ environments and continuously build contextual knowledge combined with network effects can create value that competitors cannot easily replicate.

Q: What is the difference between buying AI and truly adopting it?

Many enterprises purchase AI tools without integrating them into daily workflows, leading to pilot projects that never scale. True adoption requires close attention to user behavior, engagement, and retention rather than surface-level deployment.

Q: What mindset does Chris recommend for individuals navigating the AI era?

He emphasizes becoming an infinite learner by continuously absorbing new information, noticing weak signals, and being willing to let go of past success formulas. At the same time, he believes human qualities like creativity, judgment, and kindness will grow even more valuable in an AI-driven world.

Transcripts of YouTube

It’s really the biggest wave that I’ve seen in my lifetime. And I think that’s because of the way it has so much impact on almost every possible business and almost every possible life. The potential for AI to just dramatically change the way we do everything is enormous. And we’re still at the very beginning of it. We barely even scratched the surface… Read More

Book: Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?

The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion as quickly as possible.

Get a Copy

Follow Chris Yeh on social

• LinkedIn

• X

• Personal website

• Website (Blitzscaling)

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If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

I’m Bobby Powers, and I run the Leader & Learner publication on Substack. I write two posts per week that will help you become a more curious leader and learner.

For the past decade, I’ve been reading at least 70 books per year (mostly nonfiction). I love page-turning true stories, and these 20 books are the fastest-paced ones I’ve found. I included a three-sentence summary of each.

20. A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Walter Lord invites you on board the world’s largest and fanciest ship. You’ll feel the excitement of its 1912 maiden voyage, blissful ignorance while the ship scrapes an iceberg, and an icy chill when you plunge into 28°F water. I didn’t know it was possible to write a historical book so short (182 pages) yet so impactful—especially about a disaster I thought I already knew (the Titanic).

19. Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton

Many companies have fascinating founding stories, but Twitter’s is the craziest I’ve ever read. One-by-one, each Twitter co-founder was stabbed in the back by their co-workers and/or investors. I was also surprised to learn that the company essentially began as a podcasting company called Odeo, then pivoted into the social media platform we know today.

18. Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale

Eighteen-year-old Frank Abagnale allegedly impersonated a pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor while pulling off cons for millions of dollars. Confidence can be a superpower, and Abagnale got away with most of his cons through sheer audacity. Even though the veracity of his story has been called into question, the book remains a page-turner about a young kid lying his ass off and taking advantage of the system.

17. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Fourteen years ago, I asked one of the senior leaders at my company about his favorite leadership books, and his #1 book caught me by surprise: Into Thin Air. Krakauer’s memoir about a disastrous hike on Mount Everest is not only fast-paced, it’s also a manual on how to make better decisions, listen to wise counsel, and prepare for difficult projects. I read it and have been a Krakauer fan ever since.

16. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich

Mezrich’s book about Ivy Leaguers fleecing casinos became the Hollywood blockbuster 21. But it’s more than just a blackjack story. Bringing Down the House shows what happens when powerful people find out you’ve found a way to rig the system ever-so-slightly in your favor.

15. The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

When he lost his final bid for the U.S. presidency, Teddy Roosevelt defaulted to his standard response amidst failure: tackling an immense new challenge—one that would help him re-prove exactly how badass he was. Roosevelt set his sights on the Amazon to explore a dangerous, previously uncharted river mysteriously called “The River of Doubt.” Millard’s tale is a nonfiction triumph.

14. The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle

Olympic gold medal cyclist Tyler Hamilton teamed up with author Daniel Coyle to write this tell-all book about Lance Armstrong and doping in U.S. cycling. Hamilton explains that Armstrong not only used performance-enhancing drugs but also pushed them on teammates. It’s one thing to hear accusations from reporters and critics, but it’s another for a teammate to write a book exposing the scandal from the inside.

13. Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Krakauer makes the list again with this investigative journalism tale about a double murder with ties to the Fundamentalist LDS church. The tale is gritty, violent, and unbelievable, touching on modern-day polygamy and FLDS history. FX later dramatized the story with a TV series starring Andrew Garfield and Sam Worthington.

12. Foxcatcher by Mark Schultz

The du Pont family earned billions from gunpowder, chemicals, and automotives, turning them into one of America’s richest families. A chunk of the family fortune passed down to John du Pont, who established a world-class training facility (“Foxcatcher”) for Olympic wrestlers like Dave and Mark Schultz. The brothers tolerated du Pont’s eccentric behavior so they could use the facility, but they came to regret that choice (in a big way).

11. The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

While working at a Seattle crisis clinic, Rule befriended a nice guy named Ted. Years later, she was tasked with writing a book about the serial killings that had ravaged Washington and the Northwest. She was shocked when the police investigations led to a familiar face: her friend Ted Bundy.

10. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Throughout the 1910s-1930s, dozens of Native Americans from Osage Nation were systematically killed by people trying to claim their oil rights. The flurry of murders prompted a federal government investigation, which later led to the creation of the FBI. Grann’s book pulls back the covers on this sad but true story that never showed up in any of my American history textbooks.

9. Blind Eye by James Stewart

Death followed Dr. Michael Swango everywhere. As soon as he arrived in a hospital, patients’ conditions would inevitably worsen, which led some hospital employees to joke about Swango’s bad luck—while others suspected something more sinister. In addition to being a fascinating story about a morbid serial killer, this book reveals the massive flaws in our medical system that allowed Swango to bounce from one hospital to another, even after colleagues caught on to his tactics.

8. Educated by Tara Westover

Westover graduated with a PhD from Cambridge in 2014. Based on her resume, you’d never guess she was raised by a family that feared the government, refused medical treatment, practiced abuse and neglect, and spurned education. Her book is arguably the craziest memoir I’ve ever read.

7. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

Ronan Farrow, an investigative journalist for The New Yorker, broke the story about Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual abuse in Hollywood. The most depressing part of this story is that multiple media executives and corporations tried to protect Weinstein and bury the scandal, even after learning the truth of the allegations. Read this book as a cautionary tale about money, power, and hierarchy.

6. Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

Lewis unearths the hidden secrets of high-frequency traders who rigged financial markets in their favor. His revelations caused quite a splash when Flash Boys came out in 2015, prompting Wall Street executives to try to cover up the various ways they’d been taking advantage of clients. Lewis has written some incredible books (Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, etc.), but this is the most gripping of them all.

5. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Larson tells the story of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the stage for feats of architectural wonder as well as diabolical acts of crime. Serial killer H.H. Holmes used the fair as a chance to lure victims to a hotel he outfitted for torture. Larson weaves historical nonfiction with artistic license, similar to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

4. Molly’s Game by Molly Bloom

Through her raw determination, quick wit, and hard work, outsider Molly Bloom infiltrated the most elite circles of power in LA and NY to run high-stakes poker games for Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alex Rodriguez, Nelly, and other celebs. Even if you’ve seen the Aaron Sorkin movie, the book is well worth a read. This story is wild.

3. The Wager by David Grann

Grann skyrocketed to fame with bestsellers like Killers of the Flower Moon (mentioned earlier in this list) and The Lost City of Z. Those books are amazing, but his newest one is even better. It’s about a tragic shipwreck, life-or-death decisions, lies, mutiny, and murder.

2. American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

In February 2011, a new website called The Silk Road launched on the dark web and provided an online marketplace where people could purchase illegal drugs, weapons, and even paid assassins. The man behind the “Amazon for crime” turned out to be mild-mannered Ross Ulbricht, an Eagle Scout turned computer hacker who broke bad to become an online drug kingpin. The FBI had a hell of a time trying to track down Ulbricht, and Bilton provides the lurid details.

1. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Stanford student Elizabeth Holmes’s company Theranos was the talk of Silicon Valley after she landed a $10 billion valuation. But because she and her right-hand man knew their medical technology couldn’t do the things they promised, they lied about their product, then fired, harassed, and sued anyone who threatened to turn whistleblower. While writing Bad Blood, WSJ reporter John Carreyrou was tailed and threatened multiple times.

I hope you enjoy these great books. Each one includes an affiliate link from Bookshop.org. (If you buy one, you’ll support me as well as local bookstores. Win-win!)

If you’re interested in receiving two posts per week with book recs and personal development tips, I’d be honored for you to subscribe to Leader & Learner.

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Bobby Powers:

  Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries, revealing their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, Bobby Powers, is a dedicated learner passionate about leadership and personal development. With over a decade of experience managing teams, leading onboarding, and Learning and Development programs at various startups and SMBs, Bobby is also an avid reader, having read over a thousand books in the last 15 years.

  ✨ Want a concise summary before diving in? Install the YouTube Summary with ChatGPT extension by Glasp for instant video summaries!

Would you like to take Glasp on the go?

With the Glasp mobile app, you can highlight and organize your favorite content anytime, anywhere. Stay productive on the move and never miss an insightful quote.

Download for iOS

Download for Android

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Share Glasp Newsletter

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We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: Bulk Import Kindle Highlights into NotebookLM!

Now, you can bulk import Kindle highlights from multiple books into NotebookLM with Glasp. This makes easy to organize your sources and explore ideas across books.

Note: This tutorial was originally published on Glasp. Please refer to the original article for the latest updates.

✨ Why We Built It

We all love reading on Kindle, whether it’s business books, essays, or deep research.
But turning highlights into something you can actually use later is harder than it should be.

Highlights often stay scattered across books, and revisiting them takes time. With Glasp + NotebookLM, you can turn your Kindle highlights into clean, searchable sources, so you can learn faster, connect ideas, and generate insights instantly.

• Bulk import highlights from multiple Kindle books into NotebookLM

• Organize and clean up your highlights before using them as sources

• Ask NotebookLM questions about your books and highlights

• Summarize key ideas, compare concepts across books, and generate new insights

• Turn reading notes into content for writing, studying, and research

Note: Please make sure you import and use Kindle highlights in compliance with the copyright laws and regulations in your country/region of residence.

🪄 How It Works

Let’s walk through how to set it up in just a few steps 👇

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Select a browser: Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, Microsoft Edge, etc.

On your search tab, type in “glasp.co” and you will be automatically directed to the page of Glasp. Or access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp - Kindle Highlights Importer

Upon reaching it click “Sign up” and continue using your Google Account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, you will be redirected to the Chrome Web Store.

Step 2: Install the Glasp extension to your browser

Click Add to Chrome(Brave, Safari, or Edge) and install Glasp to your chosen browser.

👉 Glasp — Chrome Web Store

👉 Glasp — Safari Web Store

After you install the extension, make sure you pin it on the toolbar. It makes it easier to open the Glasp on the sidebar. If you’re asked to sign in to Glasp on the sidebar, please do it.

Step 3: Go to your Glasp profile page

Once you’ve installed the Glasp extension and signed in, go to your profile page by clicking the Profile icon in the sidebar.

This will take you to your Profile page. Now, click Kindle at the top.

Step 4: Sign in to Kindle Cloud Reader

After you install Glasp, please visit Kindle Cloud Reader. You can search Kindle Cloud Reader on Google. And the page’s URL is like https://read.amazon.com or https://read.amazon.jp

Step 5: Select a Kindle book to import to NotebookLM

If you can successfully log in to Kindle Cloud Reader, you can see a page like below. So, please click Notes & Highlights on the left.

You can see a page below. Select a book to copy highlights on the left. Then, please click Select Books on the Glasp modal at the top right. If you cannot see the modal, so make sure that you’ve successfully installed it.

Then, please select books you’d like to import to NotebookLM. After selecting books, click Import to Glasp at the bottom right.

Step 6: Copy Kindle Highlights from Your Profile Page

Go back to your Glasp profile page and refresh it. You should see the Kindle highlights you imported.

Then, click Copy Highlights at the top right.

Step 7: Paste Kindle highlights to NotebookLM

Open NotebookLM and paste the Kindle highlights you copied. Then, type any prompt you want.

Step 8: Bulk Import Kindle highlights

If you want to import highlights from multiple Kindle books at once, go back to Kindle Cloud Reader. Select the book you want to import into NotebookLM, then download the highlights as a file (e.g., Markdown).

In NotebookLM, click the Upload files button. If your Kindle highlights file is zipped, unzip it before uploading it to NotebookLM.

Once the upload is complete, you’ll see all the resources imported into NotebookLM. Then, type any prompt you’d like.

A quick and easy way, isn’t it? You can copy and paste Kindle highlights without any export limits just by clicking a few buttons. If you’d like to build your online bookshelf, please sign up for Glasp.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡Pro Tips

• Use the .md export option to integrate your Kindle highlights directly with your note-taking apps like Notion or Obsidian.

• Export .csv to analyze your content strategy over time.

Bonus: Review Your Kindle Highlights Daily

If you’d like to revisit your Kindle highlights, Glasp can send you a small selection of your highlights every day.

Please check the tutorial below:

👉 Daily Kindle Review

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