January 28, 2020
The Naval Podcast, Hosted By Naval Ravikant & Babak Nivi: Season 2 – The Practical Philosophy of Health and Happiness (All Episodes)
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This is a master post featuring the Key Takeaways from season 2 of Naval Ravikant’s (@naval) podcast series, co-hosted with Babak Nivi (@nivi). We’ll update this post regularly as new episodes drop.
Happiness Is Not Science or Math | Episode 3
- Happiness is a loaded term—it means different things to different people
- Happiness is more like poetry than math
- In this podcast series, Naval plans to use “happiness,” “joy,” “peace,” and “bliss” interchangeably
- “This is not mathematics. You cannot link algorithms together. This is more like poetry. If you read 50 poems by the same poet and try to map them out analytically and map words from one poem to another and see if it makes sense, you’ll miss the point. Don’t fixate on the words. Don’t even fixate on the sentences. Ponder the overall thought process and message.” – Naval Ravikant
- In this podcast series, Naval plans to use “happiness,” “joy,” “peace,” and “bliss” interchangeably
You Can Buy Your Way Out of Unhappiness | Episode 2
- You may not be able to buy your way to happiness, but you can buy your way out of common causes of happiness
- Osho has famously said, “Every time I meet a prostitute, she wants to talk about God. And every time I meet a priest, he wants to talk about sex.”
- Naval adds: “Whatever it is that you deny yourself will become your new prison“
- When you’re sick, your desires run away
- “Without the ability to get up and function, you can’t turn into the desiring machine that you are.”
- This relates to a famous Confucious quote: “A sick man only wants one thing; a healthy man wants ten thousand things.”
If You Live Long Enough, You Become a Philosopher | Episode 1

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- Naval’s new podcast series discusses the practical philosophy of health, wealth, and happiness
- Many think of philosophy as “impractical” – it’s abstract, obtuse, written in fancy language, etc.
- “If you live long enough, you become a philosopher because you start trying to solve the big problems in your life. The big problems are the old ones—the ones we’ve been trying to solve since the beginning: How do I stay happy? How do I become healthy? How do I become wealthy? How do I raise the family I want?” – Naval Ravikant
- Health—whether mental, physical, or financial—is a state of being well
- Mental health = being at peace and content with oneself
- Physical health = not suffering from afflictions, disease, and addictions
- Financial health = not having to living in a constant state of financial worry


