Podcast: Lex Fridman Podcast
Episode: Bhaskar Sunkara: Socialism and Communism | Lex Fridman Podcast #349
Here’s a list of all the books mentioned in this episode, complete with an Amazon buy link and quotes from the episode.
The Socialist Manifesto
Buy on Amazon"He's a Democratic Socialist, a political writer, the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of The Nation, a former Vice Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality."
The light that failed
Buy on Amazon"As I often do, please allow me to read a few lines from the poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling: 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too, if you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.'"
Bowling Alone
Buy on Amazon"Hey, you know, leisure should mean civic activity too, right? I mean, there's that famous book by Robert Putnam, 'Bowling Alone,' or whatever—he describes it for now."
Stalin's citizens
Buy on Amazon"Perhaps I'll sort of reveal my bias here as I've been reading too much, maybe not enough, but a lot about, you know, books like 'Stalin's War in Ukraine,' and just I've been reading a lot about the 30s and 40s for personal reasons related to my travels in Ukraine and all that kind of stuff."
The Spirit Level
Buy on Amazon"Plenty of studies point to the adverse psychological effects of inequality, as discussed in the popular book 'The Spirit Level' about how inequality adversely affects the psyches of both the rich and the poor."
The Socialist Manifesto
Buy on Amazon"You also wrote the book that we mentioned a few times, The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. What's the framework?"