Episode · The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast · 2026-07-06
Books mentioned on What to Do When Life Feels Empty
What does a 75-year-old man leaving his father's house for the first time have to do with the darkest question a human being can ask about themselves?
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Discussed“I read first book by Alexander Soljenitz and I read when I was about 13. It was one day in the life of Ivan Denisvich and it was the first book that had come out of the Soviet Union really during a a period of thaw in the early 1960s that revealed what had happened under Stella and then I”
Where to get it
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1984
George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 depicts a chilling totalitarian society under the constant surveillance of Big Brother.
Discussed“and then I read 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World.”
Where to get it
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Brave New World
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a dystopian novel that imagines a futuristic society engineered through biological conditioning, technological control, and the elimination of traditional human emotions.
Discussed“and then I read 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World.”
Where to get it
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The Gulag Archipelago
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a monumental historical exposé documenting the vast system of Soviet forced labor camps through personal testimonies and historical research.
Discussed“This was while I was reading Soljenitson's book on the Gulleg archipelago and various accounts of totalitarian brutality in Nazi Germany and and so forth and some psychoanalytic work and and that's where the story part emerges.”
Where to get it
