
Conspiracy
A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire
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Narrated by:
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Ryan Holiday
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By:
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Ryan Holiday
About this listen
An NPR Book Concierge best book of 2018!
A stunning story about how power works in the modern age - the book the New York Times called "one helluva page-turner" and The Sunday Times of London celebrated as "riveting...an astonishing modern media conspiracy that is a fantastic read." Pick up the book everyone is talking about.
In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private.
This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental - it had been masterminded by Thiel.
For years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem". When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of page views and to say the things that others were afraid to say. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit - until it was too late.
The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean - for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture?
In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious - and successful - secret plots in recent memory.
Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after listening to this audiobook - and seeing the access the author was given - no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world.
©2018 Ryan Holiday (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness - to be steady while the world spins around you. In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living.
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Needs to be read by a professional voice talent
- By Kindle Customer on 10-08-19
By: Ryan Holiday
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Hidden History
- An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics
- By: Donald Jeffries
- Narrated by: Lars Mikaelson
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The US government has spent half the time covering up conspiracies as it has spent helping the American people. In Hidden History, you will see the amount of effort over the past fifty years that our government has dedicated to lying and covering up the truth to the world. Starting with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Don Jeffries chronicles a wide variety of issues that have plagued our country's history.
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Good information with too much opinion.
- By humble on 12-29-19
By: Donald Jeffries
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Right Thing, Right Now
- Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds.
- By: Ryan Holiday
- Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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For the ancients, everything worth pursuing in life flowed from a strong sense of justice—or one’s commitment to doing the right thing, no matter how difficult. In order to be courageous, wise, and self-disciplined, one must begin with justice. The influence of the modern world often tells us that acting justly is optional. Holiday argues that that’s simply untrue—and the fact that so few people today have the strength to stand by their convictions explains much about why we’re so unhappy.
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Echoes left wing narratives
- By Jesse Williams on 07-02-24
By: Ryan Holiday
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Why Information Grows
- The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
- By: César Hidalgo
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.
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Great book!
- By bpjammin on 01-07-17
By: César Hidalgo
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Lives of the Stoics
- The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
- By: Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman
- Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience, and virtue. In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known - and not so well-known - Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it.
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Awful narration
- By Jordan Bailey on 10-03-20
By: Ryan Holiday, and others
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Growth Hacker Marketing
- A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
- By: Ryan Holiday
- Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
- Length: 2 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Growth hackers have thrown out the old playbook and replaced it with tools that are testable, trackable, and scalable. They believe that products and businesses should be modified repeatedly until they're primed to generate explosive reactions. Best-selling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for many successful brands, authors, and musicians, explains the new rules in a book that has become a marketing classic in Silicon Valley and around the world.
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Good for stimulating thought short on substance
- By Amazon Customer on 03-09-19
By: Ryan Holiday
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The Obstacle Is the Way
- The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
- By: Ryan Holiday
- Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
- Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The book draws its inspiration from stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience. Stoics focus on the things they can control, let go of everything else, and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better, stronger, tougher. As Marcus Aurelius put it nearly 2000 years ago: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
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Brilliant book; Terrible Reader
- By Jeffrey Dickinson on 06-24-23
By: Ryan Holiday
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Meditations
- A New Translation
- By: Marcus Aurelius, Gregory Hays - translator, Ryan Holiday - foreword
- Narrated by: Roger Davis, Ryan Holiday
- Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written.
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Did not like the narrator
- By bilbo0316 on 06-10-24
By: Marcus Aurelius, and others
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Play Nice but Win
- A CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader
- By: Michael Dell, James Kaplan
- Narrated by: Michael Dell
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy — or destroy it completely.
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Not perfect, but worth a listen
- By James S. on 11-09-21
By: Michael Dell, and others
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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The Swerve
- How the World Became Modern
- By: Stephen Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic by Lucretius—a beautiful poem containing the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles.
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Very compelling history, a less compelling thesis
- By A reader on 05-01-12
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Ego Is the Enemy
- By: Ryan Holiday
- Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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"While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their images with sheer, almost irrational force, I've found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition." (From the prologue)
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Disappointing. Thin, weak reading.
- By Robert on 09-08-16
By: Ryan Holiday
An excellent story
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Very Interesting
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Slow talker good book
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While this is a book about a conspiracy, it also (and I'd argue mainly) a book about strategy both legal and personal. In hindsight, many significant events where the outcome is unexpected (Black Swan events) are the result of small moves made at exactly the right time, the amplification of those moves by luck, and a significant amount of grit on the parts of the people involved. Holiday does an excellent job of weaving these themes together to show how all three of these factors played a role in leading to the result they did. This is where the book shines and makes for an engaging real-life drama.
The problem with this audio book isn't with the book at all but with narration. I've noticed there's a trend in recent audio books (particularly non-fiction) to have the author read the text (my guess is that its a money-saving move). I haven't enjoyed a single listening experience yet where this has been done. While the books are fine, the narration has been mediocre to poor. In one book, the author knew what he wanted to emphasize but it came across as preachy. In other books, the tone of the author's voice isn't strong enough to listen to for hours on end. In contrast, great narrators can make even a mediocre book enjoyable. Unfortunately, this book represents a new narrative low for me. Holiday reads the text as if there is a single word in front of him at a time and his cadence is staccato and jarring to the point of being almost unlistenable. Even at 1.5 speed, listening to the book becomes grating after just a few minutes.
My ask to publishers is to spend what is needed on a strong, professional narrator. The reader can make or break the overall experience of an audio book and either enhances the text or destroys it. I've stopped books entirely (some quite good) because I'm unable to endure a poor reader. I use audio books because the format works best for my lifestyle. Writers invest their time and life energy into creating great books. Please invest in making the audio version one that enhances that work.
Interesting story read (very) poorly
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2. Ryan should not read his own work. It was uncomfortable to listen to his awkward timing and intonation, and it sounded like he may have had some nasal congestion when he recorded the audio. Please leave the narration to a voice actor in the future.
Great book / bad narration
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Fascinating
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Engaging and Thought Provoking.
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The novel was very entertaining until the last 3 chapters in which the author decided to become critical of trump and his supporters even taking it to the extreme in questioning if Thiels support of trump conflicts his true actions and beliefs
Would have preferred the author give me the heads up in the beginning, of the stupid content of the last 3 chapters so I could have avoided wasting 3 hours of my life listening to his shit. This is the problem with the liberal media, it is impossible to report accurately and unbiased. If you are a libertarian and Thiel admirer you will enjoy the story with the exemption of the last 3 editorial chapters so suggest concluding the book there. If you are a crazy liberal you should skip all preceding chapters and only read the last 3 chapters.
This is the same shit that has infiltrated espn. If I want to watch sports I don’t want to hear your fucking political views
Good book until the author spent the last 3 chapters bashing trump and his supporters
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Narration mars a well-crafted story.
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I do wish the narration had been done by an actor, but that doesn’t take away from this book.
Listen and learn.
Outstanding Story
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