#329 Charlie Munger (the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack)

**David Senra** (0:00)
There is a very, very special conversation with Charlie Munger that has been released for the very first time today. It is a conversation that Charlie had with John Coulson, the co-founder of Stripe. It is available on the Invest Like the Best podcast feed. You can listen to the entire conversation for free. I've already listened to it for four times. I've read the entire transcript. I thought it was incredible. I will leave a link to the episode down below, but you can just search for Invest Like the Best on whatever podcast player you're listening to this now and listen to that conversation. In fact, I would listen to that conversation before I even listen to this podcast, because I talk about a lot of the ideas that is in that conversation and how they relate to the ideas that are in the new updated version, the Stripe Press version of Poor Charlie's Almanac, which is also available for the very first time today. I hope you listen to the conversation and order yourself a copy of the book. Links for both are down below, and I hope you enjoy this episode.
I first came across Poor Charlie's Almanac in my 20s when I was trying to learn everything I could about what made successful businesses tick. I found it to be a refreshing rebuttal of conventional financial wisdom delivered with unusual simplicity and candor.
Never before had I heard a venerated businessperson express such trenchant insights about investing, finance and the world more broadly, and with such chutzpah.
One can't help but read a line like, without numerical fluency, you were like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, and come away not only chuckling, but also a little bit wiser.
I had the privilege of meeting Charlie at his home in Los Angeles. I was delighted to find that he is just as engaging and intellectually curious in person as he is on the page. He also, I discovered, had considerably more stamina than I do. More than four hours into our dinner, I was ready for bed while Charlie showed no signs of flagging.
Our conversation that night was wide-ranging, touching on everything from the economics of ski resorts to raising children to the evolution of the news industry.
Witnessing Charlie's prodigious intellectual breadth and multidisciplinary mode of reasoning firsthand only reinforced my admiration both for the man himself and for this book.
Poor Charlie's Omnac is a testament to the power of thinking across disciplines. It's not just a book about investing. It's a guide to learning how to think for yourself and to understand the world around you.
His insatiable appetite for learning, his uncanny ability to evaluate businesses using simple frameworks that produce more reliable analysis than complex financial statements, and his partnership with Warren Buffett have persisted for decades through boom times and bust.
Although Charlie didn't invent the concept of compounding growth, his success and that of Berkshire Hathaway is a testament to its existence.
The practical wisdom of poor Charlie's almanac, this ode to curiosity, generosity, and virtue will similarly compound as successive generations of entrepreneurial readers extend.
His lessons to their own circumstances. I'm going to read it again. The practical wisdom of poor Charlie's almanac, this ode to curiosity, generosity, and virtue will similarly compound as successive generations of entrepreneurial readers extend his lessons to their own circumstances. That is a line worth double underlining, which I did. I encourage you to read Charlie's speeches and essays with an open, curious mind. This is my second favorite line in this entire book, but this section as well.
You will be rewarded with insights that stay with you for a lifetime. As Charlie once said, there is no better teacher than history in determining the future. There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.
The same might be said of poor Charlie's almanac. It is the ultimate value investment.
And that was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the brand new updated version coming out today of Poor Charlie's Almanac, The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, edited by Charlie's longtime friend, Peter Kaufman, and republished and made beautiful by Stripe Press. So before I jump back into the book, I just want to update you on this project that Charlie Munger collaborated with Stripe Press on.
They've been working on it for the last two years. Sadly, as you know, Charlie just passed away last week. I'm going to leave the link down below, but you have to check out the new website that Stripe Press made for this updated and abridged version of Poor Charlie's Almanac. And for the first time ever, first of all, I'm going to heavily, heavily try to convince you to order a book. I think it's an indispensable reference for anybody trying to get ahead in life. So you can order the hard copy book. I think I paid like $22 for mine or something like that. It's a no-brainer in my opinion. But also, for the very first time ever, there's going to be a digital version, and that version is going to be available for free. There's also going to be, they recorded an interview with John Collison interviewing Charlie Munger. The video of that interview is going to be available for free on their website. And in addition to the video, the audio of that interview is going to be published. It's already available today by the time you listen to this on my friend Patrick Runs, Invest Like the Best podcast, which as you already know, it's one of my favorite podcasts. That audio of the conversation between John Collison and Charlie Munger is available right now on the Invest Like the Best podcast feed. Now, I had early access to listen to that episode. I'm on my fourth listen. I took extensive notes. I will reference them throughout our conversation today. In addition to that, my friend Tamara Winter runs Stripe Press, and she actually gave me the very first copy of this book. So I've had several weeks to go through and reread Poor Charlie's Almanac, as you know. As you probably know, first time I read the book was back in 2019 It was episode 90 of Founders. And in the interim, I reread my highlights from the book, you know, dozens of times.