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Books podcasts were talking about in March 2021
March 2021 brought diverse book recommendations and discussions on the Lex Fridman Podcast, spanning economics, personal finance, philosophy, and classical literature. Anthony Pompliano joined the show to share foundational reads from his past, including George S. Clason's The Richest Man in Babylon, which shaped his early financial perspective during his service in Iraq. Pompliano also praised Paul Kalanithi's memoir When Breath Becomes Air and highlighted specific cryptocurrency and economic titles such as Jason Williams's book on Bitcoin, Isaiah Jackson's Bitcoin & Black America, Jeff Booth's The Price of Tomorrow, and Mark Spitznagel's The Dao of Capital, noting how the latter aligns with long-term financial thinking. In a separate episode, guest Ronald Sullivan discussed influential texts that shaped his intellectual journey, recommending Richard J. Carbray's Prophets of Human Solidarity (referencing Richard Rorty's ideas on contingency and irony) and Fyodor Dostoevsky's enduring novel Crime and Punishment, a gripping work that captured his imagination from his teenage years and remained a frequent point of return throughout his life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
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The Richest Man in Babylon
Discussed“i read when i was 20 actually sitting in the desert of iraq um rich dad poor dad think and grow rich and the richest man in babylon”
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When Breath Becomes Air
Discussed“and then i think one of the best books probably ever written is uh i think it's called when breath becomes air um or air becomes breath i can't remember uh but it's basically a doctor or a medical professional who's dying and he essentially writes about the experience and thoughts and kind of all the stuff”
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Jason Williams Book
Discussed“there is uh bitcoin uh money you can't fuck with uh it's written by our friend jason williams uh as you can imagine it's basically what it talks about”
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Bitcoin & Black America
Discussed“there's a book called bitcoin in black america written by a guy isaiah jackson and he basically lays out the argument for why the black community can benefit in a asymmetric way from something like bitcoin”
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The Price of Tomorrow
Discussed“there's the uh i think it's called the cost of tomorrow a guy uh jeff booth uh jeff booth wrote it”
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The Dao of Capital
Discussed“is a book called the dao of capital by mark spitznagel and so what he essentially does is he just reiterates over and over and over again long-term thinking outliers disruption all the stuff”
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Prophets of Human Solidarity
Discussed“so uh i i'll give you a a couple uh so one is uh contingency irony and solidarity by richard wardy he's a he's passed away now but was a philosopher at some of our major institutions princeton harvard stanford um contingency irony and solidarity at least that's a book that really helped me work through um a series of”
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Crime and Punishment
Discussed“but the the other book i was going to say is dostoevsky's crime and punishment and uh i mean i've always wanted to go to saint pete's uh just to sort of see with my own eyes what the word pictures that dostoevsky created in crime and punishment”
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The Book of Five Rings
Discussed“...axioms that have come down through things like the book of five rings or the art of war or you know like von klosterwicz even anything like that”
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The Divine Comedy
Discussed“but being italian one thing that really impressed me tremendously is the divine comedy it is a medieval poem a very long poem divided in three parts hell purgatory in paradise”
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Hitler
Discussed“he showed up to this conversation with a gift of the second volume of ian kershaw's biography on hitler a two-volume set that is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest if not the greatest most definitive studies of hitler”
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The Third Reich in Power
Discussed“and look third reich in power Let me plug it by richard uh richard evans I think is what it was because that actually will tell you like what was it like to live under the nazi regime without the war”
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Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson Set
Discussed“I'm obsessed with these books um by robert carro the biographies of lyndon johnson”
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The White Pill
Discussed“He's working on like a big book for a while which is white pill”
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Geek Silicon Valley
Discussed“just like in how he built like i read a biography of him”
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Grant
Discussed“ron chernow ron chernow's grant It's a thousand pages”
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Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Discussed“the book that probably had the most impact on me which is also a historical nonfiction is i am obsessed with antarctic exploration and it all began with a book called shackleton's incredible journey which is the collection of diaries of everybody who was on shackleton's journey”
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Mawson's Will
Discussed“so for example i read another one recently called mawson's will douglas mawson he was an australian”
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The Gathering Storm
Discussed“only churchill he was the only one in the you know in the gathering storm like being like hey this is really bad”
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Digital Minimalism
Discussed“he doesn't use social media and in his book digital minimalism he encourages people to find the right amount of social media usage that provides value and joy”
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The Ethics of Aristotle
Discussed“i mean aristotle talked about this if you go back and and read the ethics he's trying to understand the meaning of life”
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Quantum Computing since Democritus
Discussed“well in the case of scott anderson he's good he's able to turn on like the inner troll and comedian and so on”
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The Hagakure
Discussed“to be perfectly honest i mean reading the hagakure going back to philosophy books This was really impactful on me as a younger adult Because here's a book written in the 19th century about someone who lived through the 19th and 18th century at times as a samurai now a monk And his objections to society at the time the”
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Wrestling Tough
Discussed“there's a book called wrestling tough Yeah this is a really good book there's i've encountered in my life a few uh especially in wrestling people who really tried to find a way to use anger to get really angry at their opponent Not like stupid anger but just like intense pointed uh anger uh distilled into something uh that”
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Discussed“well there was an example in the spoke zarathustra about a snake being down the person's throat and biting it and then having this maniacal laughter erupting and you know to me it was at least i read it as yeah okay there's this insane moment that isn't forever but that it is life and death”
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The Outfit
Discussed“derived from a book by called the outfit by ah what is his name uh i forget but darwin cook the comics illustrator he did donald westlake wrote so darwin cooked is does an amazing comic book send up of darwin cook's novels And they are fucking incredible”
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No Country for Old Men
Discussed“part of the reason why i like no country for old men so much which i felt was a great great great movie even better book but uh i remember talking to my friend and i go you know anton chigger is the most pure human being in that whole book”
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
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Your Favorite Seuss
Discussed“you know i started to think about um the dr seuss thing and here's my theory on dr seuss for one i started to think that i bet i bet someone had a lot of dr seuss books that the sales on them had probably slowed down because i don't know if people are buying as dr seuss as much”
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Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham with 12 Silly Sounds!
Discussed“so then suddenly everyone goes and buys the dr seuss books now everybody's cat in the head it up everybody's hammed and greened you know”
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Horton Hears a Who!
Discussed“and everybody's hearing horton's in the distance you know it is what it is”
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Tools for the Master's work, comprising over 250 sermon outlines [&c.] collected by J. Ellis
Discussed“well i i certainly haven't well i did come from the sermon on the mount so hypothetically it's a reliable source you know”
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The Indian in the Cupboard
Discussed“You can't be like indian in the cupboard you got to be you know indian in the closet who left a note”
Modern Wisdom
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Automation and Utopia
Discussed“So we're going to talk about this book that i wrote a couple years ago on automation and utopia which is kind of a very you know abstract philosophical look at the meaning of life in a post-work world”
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A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence
Discussed“i actually i'm a co-author on a a new book which looks at a lot of these themes... called the a citizen's guide to artificial intelligence which looks like that out now”
