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Books podcasts were talking about in August 2020
August 2020 podcasts placed significant focus on ethics, human potential, and mortality. On Modern Wisdom, Alex O'Connor recommended Michael Sandel's Justice as an accessible entry point into ethics, alongside Roger Crisp's Mill on Utilitarianism for readers exploring utilitarian philosophy. The Tim Ferriss Show featured Tim Ferriss recommending Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times as a vital text on modern society. The Lex Fridman Podcast hosted Grant Sanderson and Lex Fridman, both of whom recommended Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool's Peak to discuss deliberate practice and extraordinary human performance. Later on the same podcast, Sheldon Solomon recommended Carson McCullers's 1953 novel Clock Without Hands, and Lex Fridman noted Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory in relation to Solomon's work on terror management theory. Additionally, The Book Review concluded a segment with Pamela Paul highlighting Samanth Subramanian's biography A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane.
EconTalk
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The Second Sleep
Discussed“there's a very nice uh novel by robert harris a very recent novel uh called the second sleep which came out about a year ago”
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Second Nature
Discussed“i got that from a book called second nature by a guy called haimofek which was about basically sort of you know stone age economics”
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When Police Kill
Discussed“he's the author of numerous books including when police kill which is the subject of today's conversation”
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Deterrence; the Legal Threat in Crime Control
Discussed“it's called deterrence the legal threat and crime control and um uh i don't think you were out of short pants when it was published”
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Radical Uncertainty
Discussed“today is june 17th 2020 and i have two guests today economist and author mervyn king who served as governor of the central bank of england from 2003 to 2013 and economist and author john kay together they are the authors of radical uncertainty decision making without the numbers”
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Through a Glass Darkly
Discussed“you mentioned in the book that you almost called your book uh through a glass darkly”
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Groundhog Day
Discussed“yeah i'm not sure you were right when you say that uh we'd like to be rid of uncertainty and we use a striking example in the book groundhog day”
Modern Wisdom
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The personal MBA
Discussed“and uh today we are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the personal mba man how does that feel”
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Justice
Recommended“i would recommend if you're just looking to get into ethics michael sandell's justice is a good place to start”
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Mill on Utilitarianism
Recommended“if you're interested in the discussions on utilitarianism that we've been having then roger crisp's book mill on utilitarianism is the analysis that's worth reading and i think if you want to read utilitarianism by john stuart mill it's worth reading it alongside crisps analysis or reading crisps analysis first just to make sure you kind of understand everything that”
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Justice on Trial
Discussed“okay so justice is on trial today i want you to give the opening speech approach the microphone please crystal qc and give us the opening speech”
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Nothing is true and everything is possible
Recommended“and if you are interested in this i would recommend peter pomeranzev's book nothing is true and everything is possible”
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The 10X Rule
Discussed“so like the his review of the grant cardone 10x rule he's gonna spit out his drink what was that i haven't heard this one it's just see have you ever read the 10x rule by grant cardone no”
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Chicken Soup for the Soul
Discussed“um and that's why i love books like chicken soup for the soul by jack canfield um and and a lot of other”
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Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition
Recommended“and that's why i love books like chicken soup for the soul by jack canfield”
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The Pilgrimage
Discussed“and i my lockdown week before my press lockdown week i read um the first books into uni which was the pilgrimage by paolo cuello and it sent me west sent me totally west because it was so meaningful”
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Of Mice and Men
Critiqued“getting my teachers to expect me to [ __ ] enjoy reading of mice and men for instance that's the worst [ __ ] book i've ever read maybe why the why the [ __ ] is that in school curriculum you can feel me getting annoyed about this”
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The Hunger Games
Discussed“give me the hunger games give me something that is i'm gonna actually from a start there we cannot rely on the educative system”
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Outraged
Discussed“Could you have realized before writing a book on outrage just how timely mid 2020 would be for it to be published”
The Rubin Report
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Novum organum
Discussed“English scientists, and philosophers like Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum.”
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The End of Gender
Recommended“Well, Debra, good luck with the book. We're gonna put the link to "The End of Gender" right down below.”
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Ghost Wars 12-copy floor
Discussed“Steven Coll wrote, "Ghost Wars," and he wrote, "Directorate S," and he did an exhaustive study.”
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Directorate S
Discussed“Steven Coll wrote, "Ghost Wars," and he wrote, "Directorate S," and he did an exhaustive study.”
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Common Sense
Discussed“He had taken Thomas Paine who had written an amazing pamphlet called "Common Sense" which explained the Revolutionary War to everyday people.”
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The Education of Children in Geographically Remote Regions Through Distance Education
Recommended“That can read a very simple small book by Tom Evans called "The Education of Ronald Reagan."”
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Private parts
Discussed“There's a great scene in Howard Stern's Private Parts. That's my life, I lived the same life he did.”
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The Plus
Discussed“and you wrote a book called the plus”
The Book Review
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Evil Geniuses
Discussed“Kurt Anderson will be here to discuss his new book Evil Geniuses the unmaking of America a recent history”
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Fantasyland
Discussed“so your previous book to this was fantasy land and I I feel like there's a connection so where did leave off in that book and pick up in your new book”
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H Is for Hawk
Discussed“And of course it reminded me as a reader and I think other readers have brought up this analogy of Helen Macdonald's book H Is for Hawk which is also about grieving for a father and an animal”
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Time of the Magicians
Discussed“So I recently reviewed a book called Time of the Magicians by a German philosopher and writer named Wolfram Eilenberger”
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The Metaphysical Club
Discussed“A couple of decades ago, I think it was Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club”
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A Dominant Character
Recommended“The book again is called A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane”
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Luster
Discussed“I don't know if you read our colleague parl sel's review of this debut novel by Raven Lan called luster this week”
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The Memory Police
Discussed“I'm going to going to talk about this a little later on the podcast with uh some of my colleagues here at the book review but the book that I um just read is Yoko ogawa's the memory police”
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Lost in the city
Discussed“there are two books of stories lost in the city and all ant hegar's children and in the middle of them this wonderful novel The known world”
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All Aunt Hagar's Children CD
Discussed“there are two books of stories lost in the city and all ant hegar's children and in the middle of them this wonderful novel The known world”
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Midnight Sun
Discussed“Stephanie Meyer's new book midnight sun which continues her Twilight vampire Saga this time from the perspective of the vampire Edward sold more than a million copies in its first week”
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The executioner's song
Discussed“I picked up Norman mailer's the Executioner song for some reason I cannot believe you have not read this book”
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Shot in the heart
Discussed“journalist wrote A Memoir called shot in the heart about about Gary and about the situation and I really liked the book”
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The Diving Pool
Discussed“last summer I went on vacation I I took her book the diving pool which is a collection of three novellas and that was that was really great”
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The Vapors
Discussed“David Hill will be here to tell us about his book The Vapors plus Dwight Garner will turn the tables and ask me a few questions”
Behind the Bastards
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The gravediggers
Discussed“I wrote A Choice, not an echo. I self-published it. I went to the Republican convention. Wrote a second book, The Gravediggers.”
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Mothers of Massive Resistance
Discussed“A political platform of family autonomy and parental rights, a kind of white supremacist maternalism, is how Elizabeth Gillespie McRay described this grassroots movement in her book, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy.”
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The Power of the Positive Woman
Discussed“Her 1977 book the power of positive woman of the positive woman compiled these anti-gay ideas and exclaimed that firemen who constantly risk their lives on our behalf should have the right to make a judgment that their close living and working conditions make a homosexual coworker intolerable.”
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Strike from Space
Discussed“So, titles of the book she and Ward wrote include Strike from Space, a mega death mystery. Um, which is a hell of a title. That sounds like a cool sci-fi movie.”
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Kissinger on the Couch
Discussed“Then there was Kissinger on the Couch, which was a very anti-Semitic psychoanalysis of Henry Kissinger, who she hated for his interventionalist leanings.”
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Belarus Country Study Guide
Discussed“And I found a book called with a very fun title, Belarus Country Study Guide, that certainly seems to be government propaganda.”
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Facing History
Discussed“I did find an interesting booklet called Facing History, which is um published by an international organization of educators that focus on teaching like the ugly parts of history to to people.”
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Survivors Speak
Discussed“Uh the book Survivors Speak notes, "To the extent that they could, many students tried to protect themselves and others from abuse. At the Gordon School in Saskatchewan, the older children tried to protect the younger ones from abuse at the hands of the dormatory staff."”
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True Allegiance
Discussed“And the book that I've picked, you know, the the book that Cody and Katie and I are reading, um, piece by piece, making our way through, is uh is is Ben Shapiro's True Allegiance, which is just one of the worst things ever written.”
The Tim Ferriss Show
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Not in God's Name
Discussed“He is an award-winning author of more than 30 books just incredible including not in god's name”
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Just Six Numbers
Discussed“the most distinguished mathematician in britain lord reese astronomer royal and the president of the um of the royal society once gave me his book called just six numbers in which he argues that the entire existence of the universe depends on six improbabilities”
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Morality
Recommended“the new book which i highly recommend people check out is titled morality subtitle restoring the common good and divided times”
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One Blade of Grass
Recommended“he had a book that he recently published called one blade of grass by Henry Shukman. I'm just pulling it up right now.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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All the Light We Cannot See
Discussed“uh anthony door wrote a book called all the light we cannot see which actually uh was inspired by incognito by exactly what we were talking about earlier about how you can only see a little bit of the what we call visible light in the electromagnetic radiation”
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Cosmos
Discussed“as far as not as far as nonfiction goes i grew up uh with cosmos both watching the pbs series and then reading the book”
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Accessory to War
Discussed“i don't know if you've read it i haven't read it i've been meaning to read it but neil degrasse tyson actually came out with a book that talks about like science and the context of the military”
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Peak
Recommended“a a good book to read if you want that sense is peak which essentially talks about peak performance in a lot of different ways”
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Numero uno / Peak : Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
Recommended“a good book to read if you want that sense is peak which essentially talks about peak performance in a lot of different ways like you know chess london cab drivers of how many push-ups people can do short-term memory tasks and if there's one it's meant to be like a concrete manifesto about deliberate practice and such but the”
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The Poetical Works of Alexander Smith
Discussed“what garnered my attention when i was a young punk was just a single line in an essay by a scottish guy it was alexander smith in in a book called dreamthwarp i think it's written in the 1860s”
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Birth and Death of Meaning
Discussed“um there's another book the birth and death of meaning uh which is framed um in from an evolutionary perspective”
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A Book Review of Carl Becker's Book on the Declaration of Independence
Discussed“you said you picked up becker's book and you know it felt like it was onto something that's the same thing i felt when i picked up becker's book”
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Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost In the Machine
Discussed“that would basically be like stephen pinker's blank slate”
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Second Treatise of Government
Discussed“and he starts in his second treatise on government 1690 or so”
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False Dawn
Discussed“he wrote a book about globalism”
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Totalitarianism
Discussed“and actually hannah arendt in the 1950s said the same thing in her book about totalitarianism when she said that you know that economics has reached the point where most money is made not by actually making stuff”
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In the Name of Identity
Discussed“and so there's a guy named amin malouf a lebanese guy who writes in french who in the 1990s i think wrote a book called in the name of identity violence and the need to belong”
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An Arabic Zoological Dictionary
Discussed“and so there's a guy named amin malouf a lebanese guy who writes in french who in the 1990s i think wrote a book called in the name of identity violence and the need to belong”
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Consciousness Regained
Discussed“another possibility is uh nicholas humphrey a british dude who wrote a book about i think it's called regaining consciousness”
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Deer Disassembly
Discussed“it's eric fromm uh in a book called escape from freedom he's like look you”
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Charter Schools and Their Enemies
Discussed“thomas soul uh wrote a book about uh recent book on um charter schools”
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Being and Time
Discussed“and it took me 40 years to read being in time”
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Absalom, Absalom!
Discussed“i like faulkner absalom absalom is is a fine book”
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The Decline of the West
Discussed“but there's another lunatic oswald spangler who wrote a book called decline of the west”
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Existence and being
Discussed“a year or two ago i i started reading smartin heidegger si'm reading being in time”
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The concept of time
Discussed“a year or two ago i i started reading smartin heidegger si'm reading being in time”
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Darwin's Cathedral
Discussed“so it's david sloane wilson wrote a book called darwin's cathedral”
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Escape from Freedom
Discussed“therefore it is claimed sit's eric fromm sin a book called escape from freedom he's like look you”
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Homo aestheticus
Discussed“another woman ellen dizzinayake wrote a book called homo aestheticus and following aristotle and his poetics she's like well we're not only rational animals we're also aesthetic creatures that appreciate beauty”
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Dreamthorp
Discussed“what garnered my attention when i was a young punk was just a single line in an essay by a scottish guy it was alexander smith in in a book called dreamthwarp i think it's written in the 1860s he just says right in the middle of an essay it is our knowledge that we have to die that makes”
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Clock Without Hands
Recommended“i'm enamored with a novel by a woman named carson mccullers written in 1953 called clock without hands”
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Speak, Memory
Recommended“and now let me leave you with some words from vladimir nabokov that sheldon uses in his book warm at the core the cradle rocks above and abyss and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness”
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Sleeping Island
Recommended“and it was a book called sleeping island by an author pg downs who just coincidentally lived in this area”
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Causality
Discussed“and uh the second book causality so two thousand uh the one in two thousand that one is really hard so i wouldn't recommend that”
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The Book of Why
Recommended“uh the book of why is definitely more enjoyable oh for sure yeah”
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Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems
Recommended“so i definitely liked uh judy apple's book uh probabilistic reasoning and intelligence systems it's um it's a very deep technical book but what i liked is that so there are many uh places where you can learn about probabilistic graphical models from”
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The Mind's I
Recommended“he had a book i think called it was called the mind's eye it was um uh probably half starter and daniel dennett together uh yeah so and i actually was uh i i bought that book so much i haven't read it yet”
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Flesh and Machines
Discussed“he's got a book flesh and machines i believe it's not going to be the robots versus the people”
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How to Read a Book
Recommended“sure in some sense it's it's so classical it might surprise you but i actually recently read um mortimer adler's how to read a book”
The Realignment
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How to Be an Antiracist
Discussed“I would say right now, you could raise her taxes by 25% but as long as she could remain in good social standing in PTA, aka not being aligned with Trump, not being anti-Black Lives Matter, she could go to her book club and talk about white fragility and Ibrahim Kendi's anti-racism books.”
The Rich Roll Podcast
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The Pleasure Trap
Discussed“he is the co-author of this book the pleasure trap and he's a pioneer in the plant-based nutrition space”
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A beautiful work in progress
Recommended“we didn't even talk about your book we talked about it last time but a beautiful work in progress which is a beautiful book you did an amazing job on that book i highly suggest everybody check that out”
Dwarkesh Podcast
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Against Method
Discussed“his student firearm and i think uh actually wrote a book against method um which is which is sort of yet another kind of philosopher of science arguing against that idea”
Big Technology Podcast
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Twitter and Tear Gas
Recommended“And I think that your book, Twitter, Twitter and Tear Gas is a must read for anybody out there who's interested in this stuff as well.”
Timcast IRL
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Don't Think of an Elephant!
Recommended“i'm trying to think of there's this guy george lachoff he wrote this book don't think of an elephant have you heard of this oh no but you made me think of an elephant that's great so it's a very quick read”
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Rain Man
Discussed“like rain man is necessary we need that movie”
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Lead from the Outside
Discussed“is the title of stacey abrams book which is lead from the outside which implies that she is not the governor of georgia”
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Righteous Indignation
Discussed“because that's something that andrew reitbart used to talk about in his um book he wrote righteous indignation and he talked about the ways that they were getting these ideas into colleges”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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The Miracle Mongers, an Exposé
Discussed“some of that came from houdini writing and miracle mongers all about his act so it's like you look into the history of things that have been done like [ __ ] ali the human fire hydrant and you find these there's a great book that ricky j wrote who is an amazing magician where he discusses and explains everything”
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Miracle Mongers and Their Methods
Discussed“some of that came from houdini writing and miracle mongers all about his act so it's like you look into the history of things that have been done like [ __ ] ali the human fire hydrant and you find these there's a great book that ricky j wrote who is an amazing magician where he discusses and explains everything”
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100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings
Discussed“first book 100 tricks to appear smart and meetings was published in 2016.”
StarTalk Radio
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How to make white people laugh
Discussed“so nageen if i remember correctly you wrote a book called how to make white people laugh”
Conversations with Tyler
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The machine that changed the world
Recommended“in fact there's a great mit book called the machine that changed the world that documents that now if you think of the way consultants are operating in the 90s 2000s it isn't obvious to many firms that lean was a far better way to run your factory”
Stuff You Should Know
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Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care?
Discussed“You know, I was just reading, Zeke Emanuel has one about which is the best health system in the world that does a good job of talking about the strengths and weaknesses, you know, where the US has a lot of weaknesses but has, you know, big chance to get better.”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Young China
Discussed“and that's what i liked most about your book in young china is that stuff's not ignored but it's also not the point of the book”
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The Three Musketeers
Discussed“some of it were kind of books you didn't want in the system kind of solzhenitsyn but most of it were the one we we marketed in was the three musketeers”
The Knowledge Project
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Harrington on Hold 'em
Discussed“So I read I read Harrington on Hold'em, the first two volumes, which are the two relevant volumes.”
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A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes
Recommended“Peter Bevelin wrote a book on Sherlock Holmes, too, a few lessons from Sherlock Holmes, which I thought was really good as well.”
