Why people recommend it
Macbeth is a classic tragedy by William Shakespeare that explores ambition, guilt, and the destructive consequences of political betrayal. The play was referenced across numerous literary and cultural discussions on podcasts. On Freakonomics Radio, Victor Ehikhamenor cited the work to illustrate how removing historical artifacts from their original context fractures their meaning, comparing it to tearing pages out of a Shakespearean tragedy. David Perell mentioned quoting a line from the play on How I Write to highlight the impact of powerful, straightforward writing. Satie Stein discussed school film adaptations on The Book Review, while Chamath Palihapitiya quoted a famous line on The Tucker Carlson Show to underscore the importance of spirituality. Jordan B. Peterson referenced Macbeth alongside other major tragedies on his podcast to emphasize the timeless perfection of the text. Adrian Edwards discussed the play's preservation in the First Folio on The Book Review, and Eleanor Catton noted on the same podcast that an activist group in her novel took its name from Shakespeare's Birnam Wood.
Who recommended it
- Eleanor Catton Discussed
- Victor Ehikhamenor Discussed
- David Perell Discussed
- Satie Stein Discussed
- Chamath Palihapitiya Discussed
- Jordan B. Peterson Discussed
- Graham Hancock Recommended
- Adrian Edwards Discussed
Eleanor Catton — 2 mentions
“and this arouses the attention of a young activist group in New Zealand that called themselves Burnham Wood taking that name of course from Shakespeare's play”
“had been thinking a lot about how McBeth as a tragedy has actually really quite a remarkable number of people still alive at the end of the play”
Victor Ehikhamenor — 1 mention
“They are disjointed because it's like taking William Shakespeare's Magbet or Hamlet. You go to first act, you tear the page off, then you go to the last act and you tear it off. Then you paste it on the wall and call it William Shakespeare.”
David Perell — 1 mention
“I mean this is so cliche so forgive me but I I was at dinner and a friend quoted a line from Macbeth and he quoted it and I was like dude I need to remember that.”
Satie Stein — 1 mention
“whether that be the Zepharelli or the Roman Palansky McBth or So, they showed you the most inappropriate versions of these stories.”
Chamath Palihapitiya — 1 mention
“and at some point they may never say it out loud They think I am living in a tale told by an idiot Right that's that famous quote about why spirituality is important”
Jordan B. Peterson — 1 mention
“He wasn’t interested in plots; you have Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Romeo and Juliet—could you change a single syllable and improve it?”
Graham Hancock — 1 mention
“A similar idea was explored by Professor David Lewis-Williams at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, in a fabulous book called The Mind in the Cave, where he's again asserting that astonishing similarities in cave art and rock art around the world can only be properly explained by people in deeply altered states of consciousness trying to remember their”
Adrian Edwards — 1 mention
“well if we didn't have the first folio given that all the manuscript versions of the place are lost we wouldn't have Place such as the Tempest or 12th night or a Winter's Tale or Julius cesa or anti Cleopatra or MC Beth”
Mentioned on the show without a named speaker — 3
“Um, and so much so that even in her autobiography, which was published in 1895 when she was in her 70s, she called it 'Pioneering Work'.”
“No, it's you know, people look at some of these like incredibly... so I study high-performing organizations, and I'm in the process of writing a book on this.”
“He said they feel disjointed, like tearing the pages from William Shakespeare's Macbeth or Hamlet, wherein you might take the first act and then skip to the last act before pasting the pages on the wall and declaring it Shakespeare.”
Also mentioned in the same episodes
Other mentions (3: passing, ad reads, own books)
“McBth by William Shakespeare.”
“there's McBeth that we teach as a set gcsc text it has witches in it”
“This Electoral Count Act, this was how it was always done, and anybody who cracked open an actual history book in high school and took American history would understand there were disputed elections.”