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Books podcasts were talking about in December 2018
During December 2018, several podcasts highlighted a diverse range of literary works, driven by end-of-year reflections and author interviews. On Pod Save America, Dan Pfeiffer shared his favorite reads of the year during the Christmas Mailbag episode, naming Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room, Tommy Orange's There There, Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists, and Jonathan Lethem's work. In a separate episode of Pod Save America, Katie Porter discussed Robert D. Putnam's Our Kids, noting the profound impact the sociological book made on her perspective regarding collective responsibility and individual focus. Podcasts also featured authors discussing their own writing and upcoming releases. On Modern Wisdom, guest Ed Latimore spoke with the host about his book Sober Letters to My Drunken Self, a series of essays detailing his transition to sobriety, alongside his e-book focused on the mechanics of writing tweets, Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business. Additionally, guest Marc Elliot appeared on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, where he discussed his earlier book What Makes You Tick, reflecting on how much more open he felt compared to when the book was first published six years prior. These discussions collectively captured a strong focus on personal growth, life transitions, and impactful storytelling across various genres.
Modern Wisdom
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Sober Letters to My Drunken Self
Discussed“I call it sober letters to my drunk self and I wrote that me as that as the title suggests I wrote it just a series of essays that I wish someone had wrote to me five years ago and I put it together and now with me moving along which is which is great the last things I just”
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Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business
Discussed“the other thing I have set to come out is I have an e-book on writing tweets particularly you know how to have them it's called engagement as the new cocaine I'm really really excited about the cover”
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Why?
Discussed“he's an internationally known astrophysicist a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of science best-selling author and a popular speaker his new book why what makes curious is a bit of a departure away from his previous topics on physics and astrophysics”
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The Golden Ratio
Discussed“so if anyone wants to get the book why what makes us curious or any of you are the work golden ratio or the entire back catalogue which I feel like we could have gone on all night to go through but I really appreciate your time”
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The Social Leap
Discussed“very fortunately we've managed to find a slot in Bill's book to which he's currently undergoing in America and I managed to sit down with him to go through his new book the social leap the new evolutionary science of who we are where we come from and what makes us happy”
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Catching Fire
Discussed“so Richard Wrangham talks about that is wonderful book Catching Fire how basically in order to develop the big brain that we have that's supported by such a small gut you need to be eating a lot of me”
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The Purpose of Reality
Discussed“and this is really beginning with wonderful research by Steve Simpson who's a biologist spent much of his career at Oxford and is now at Sydney University and since schon he's got a wonderful book the nature of nutrition he's shown very clearly that if you vary the protein levels in food animals will weigh over eat carbohydrates in order”
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Consciousness Genesis In Artificial Intelligence
Discussed“and then if you read super intelligence with a fantastic book on on AI by Professor Nick Bostrom from the future humanities Institute of Oxford you know if there's so many different ways that we can [ __ ] this up like many from ways and it's nearly infinite”
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
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Underground Connection
Discussed“I have a book that came out about six years ago called what makes you tick okay and but another book would be I think really good at this point you know because I that book I had just started ESP and and and beating like the 90% when that book came out and I also just wasn't as open”
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Out of the Shadows
Discussed“What I'm currently listening to on audible is out of the shadows understanding sexual addiction by Patrick Carnes”
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To Catch a Predator
Discussed“we did some investigating and I did this in a book called sketcher predator some years back and we found a case in Arkansas”
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LT
Discussed“He was doing the interview with Lawrence Taylor I think he'd just written Wow”
Pod Save America
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Our Kids
Discussed“another book that made a powerful impact on me is called our kids by Robert Putnam who wrote sociology wrote Bowling Alone”
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The Mars Room
Discussed“three most favorite books ever and this year were the Mars room by Rachel Kushner they're there by tommy orange in the immortal list by Chloe Benjamin”
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There There
Discussed“three most favorite books ever and this year were the Mars room by Rachel Kushner they're there by tommy orange in the immortal list by Chloe Benjamin”
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The Immortalists
Discussed“three most favorite books ever and this year were the Mars room by Rachel Kushner they're there by tommy orange in the immortal list by Chloe Benjamin”
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The Arrest
Discussed“and then one other book is the funeral detective by Jonathan Lethem who was probably my favorite author of the last decade or so”
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Saving Justice
Discussed“call me back blast from the past playing his greatest hits and it's not my fault by James Comey which sits nicely on the similar book”
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Impeachment
Discussed“remember remember we had Cass Sunstein on and you know Cass was very he was careful about talking about and we wrote a book on this what rises to the level of an impeachable offense or not”
The Rubin Report
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Virtually Normal
Discussed“but you're exactly right that it was only in the 1980s that Andrew Sullivan wrote about gay marriage”
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Hadith of Bukhari
Discussed“for example when i speak against stoning i can refer to the most sacred book outside the quran the bukhari and show that the stoning began when two monkeys were throwing rocks at each other in bukhari throwing rocks at each other and the companion of muhammad saw them and said okay so that that monkey must be a female”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Reinforcement Learning
Discussed“so when I first picked up Sutton's Richard Sutton's reinforcement learning book before sort of this deep learning before the re-emergence of neural networks is a powerful mechanism for machine learning”
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Ian Foster
Discussed“and and there's an amazing short story that I recommend to everyone that I talk to about this called the machine stops written in 1909 by Ian Foster who you know wrote novels about the British Empire and sort of things that became costume dramas on the BBC”
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Women and Men in Love
Discussed“He has written this amazing book I recommend to everybody called Love and Math. Two of my favorite words. (laughs) He says that if painting was taught like math, then students would be asked to paint a fence. It's just his analogy of essentially how math is taught.”
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The Mathematics Experience
Discussed“He has written this amazing book I recommend to everybody called Love and Math. Two of my favorite words. (laughs) He says that if painting was taught like math, then students would be asked to paint a fence. It's just his analogy of essentially how math is taught.”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Political Order and Political Decay
Discussed“um francis fukuyama describes our government as a V tock receive veto ah cracy”
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Cyberwar
Discussed“I mean this is what Kathleen Hall Jamieson about this is really quite amazing and documenting and that's because it's gotten really good and being able to segment markets on the basis of what people know or care about it”
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Beyond the Double Bind
Discussed“I mean this is what Kathleen Hall Jamieson about this is really quite amazing and documenting and that's because it's gotten really good and being able to segment markets on the basis of what people know or care about it”
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Health and Healing
Discussed“I wrote a book in 1983 called health and healing I had two chapters and they're on placebos”
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Spontaneous Happiness
Discussed“Well I have a book called spontaneous happiness which is about emotional wellness as a lot there about antidepressants”
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The Transparent Society
Discussed“but he wrote a book in oh years ago called the transparent society where he said there's two possibilities surveillance and surveillance”
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True Hallucinations
Discussed“he read their their book with true hallucinations”
