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Books podcasts were talking about in April 2021
April 2021 saw podcasts exploring a diverse range of fiction, financial independence, and personal development titles. On the Lex Fridman Podcast, Jeremi Suri reminisced about Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks as a favorite from his graduate studies. The ChooseFI podcast featured Jonathan discussing Raising Your Money-Savvy Family For Next Generation Financial Independence by Doug Nordman and Carol Pittner, noting that he had encouraged the authors to write it for the financial independence community. Joe Rogan recommended Dr. Bob Rotella's Golf is Not a Game of Perfect on The Joe Rogan Experience, noting its broader applications to life and athletics. Dr. John Delony used his own show, The Dr. John Delony Show, to recommend several titles, including Marc Lewis's The Biology of Desire, Karen Russell's Sleep Donation, Stephen Graham Jones's horror novel The Only Good Indians, N.K. Jemisin's short story collection How Long 'til Black Future Month?, and the elimination diet guide The Whole30 by Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig.
The Book Review
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Antitrust
Discussed“she is the senior senator from Minnesota and her new book is called Anti-Trust taking on Monopoly power from the Gilded Age to the digital age”
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The Invention of Miracles
Discussed“this week he joins us to talk about a book he reviewed for us Katie Booth's the invention of Miracles language power and Alexander grah Bell's Quest and deafness”
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Despair
Discussed“it's a novel by Nabokov called despair that I picked up I think randomly because someone on Twitter had mentioned it”
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A fan's notes
Discussed“well it's funny you talk about his funny put upon grandiosity because I'm reading a fans notes by Frederick Exley”
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So much for that
Discussed“so the two books are Lionel shriver's novel from 2010 which is the national book award finalist so much for that”
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What Comes After
Book club“Liz Egan will be here to discuss her latest pick for group text the novel what comes after”
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My Absolute Darling: A Novel
Discussed“the first was Gabriel talents my absolute darling which came out a few years ago”
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The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Recommended“I am reading the debut collection by daa filia The Secret Lives of church ladies”
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The Hill We Climb
Discussed“Amanda Gorman who made a big splash at the presidential inauguration with her inaugural poem the hill we climb released that as a book and it sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week”
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To the Finland station
Recommended“and we're also for me for the um th time reading or rereading Edmund Wilson's to the Finland station which is a fantastic book”
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Places of Mind
Critiqued“it's called places of Mind a life of Edward S and it's not good”
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Leaving a Doll's House
Discussed“he was very wounded by Clare Bloom's Memoir leaving a doll's house which portrayed him in an extremely negative light”
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Orientalism
Discussed“Timothy Brennan who teaches in the humanities department at the University of of Minnesota has written a biography of Edward SED the great public intellectual the author of orientalism which as you know is his foundational work of postcolonial studies”
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Francis Bacon
Discussed“and this week I reviewed Francis Bacon Revelations a new biography by Mark Stevens and analine Swan”
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Philip Roth
Recommended“the book again is Philip Roth the biography by Blake Bailey”
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Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight
Recommended“Julia swag joins us now she is the author of Lady Bird Johnson Hiding in plain sight”
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A Planet of Viruses
Discussed“um actually wrote a book called The Planet of viruses a few years ago”
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Visitors
Recommended“and I picked up a book I hadn't read before called visitors it's a novel from 1997 when Brookner herself was almost 70 years old”
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I Am, I Am, I Am
Recommended“I recently read this book by Maggie oeral I am I am I am 17 brushes with death now”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Henry Kissinger and the American Century
Discussed“speaking of war you wrote a book on henry kissinger”
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Complete Works of Thomas Brooks
Discussed“so one of my favorite novels that i read actually when i was in graduate school is thomas mons button brooks and it's the story of a family in lubeck in northern germany living through the 19th century and the rise and fall of families cycles of life”
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Buddenbrooks
Recommended“one of my favorite novels that i read actually when i was in graduate school is thomas mons button brooks”
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The Sovereign Individual
Discussed“I've written a lot about this uh in a new series called sovereignism which is based Loosely on a book called The sovereign individual”
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Honest Money
Discussed“so there's a great book on this called honest money by Gary North and in that book he gives the parable of the wine maker”
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Zen
Recommended“Robert perig so he wrote Zen In The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which is a very popular book book 20 years later he wrote Leela which no one's heard of”
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Gold Wars
Recommended“There's a great book on this called the gold Wars um that that outlines how governments have been waging a cold war against gold for the past 50 years”
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Slouching Toward Nirvana
Discussed“maybe it's silly but i look for the magic that charles bukowski writes about in his poem nirvana”
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An Economic Survey of Iran
Discussed“the book that really mattered for me was capitalism the unknown ideal”
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Boswell's Life of Johnson
Discussed“like in my view boswell's life of johnson 18th century british biography it's in essence a co-authored work boswell and johnson”
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The Essential Stalin
Discussed“he was a stalinist he edited the book called the essential stalin brilliant guy”
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Capitalism, the unknown ideal
Discussed“ein rand was a big influence on me growing up the book that really mattered for me was capitalism the unknown ideal”
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Life of Samuel Johnson
Discussed“like in my view boswell's life of johnson 18th century british biography it's in essence a co-authored work”
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Big Business
Discussed“big business speaking of iran big business a love letter to an american anti-hero you make the case for uh the benefit that large businesses bring to society”
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The Use of Knowledge in Society
Recommended“Another is iran capitalism the unknown ideal but i would say the friedrich hayek essay the use of knowledge in society which is about how decentralized mechanisms can work”
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Individualism
Recommended“and that was in a book called individualism and economic order but it was just a few essays in that book”
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Individualism and Economic Order
Recommended“and that was in a book called individualism and economic order but it was just a few essays in that book”
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The White Paper
Recommended“but my recommendations would be you know obviously the bitcoin white paper that's uh and satoshi's complimentary writings that's very important is to try to understand the intentions behind the system and also to understand the system without having your view colored by some third parties description of it”
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Bitcoin
Recommended“Then technical books about bitcoin i like grocking bitcoin uh which is a very computer science-heavy one”
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Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies
Recommended“There's a good textbook um called uh bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies um by arvind naranian I think he's um a princeton um computer science professor which is really good at building intuition”
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Mastering Bitcoin
Recommended“um antonopoulos's books mastering bitcoin are good”
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Layered Money
Recommended“there's a more recent book called layered money which i liked um by nick battia which goes into more depth about what i was talking about earlier in the conversation the layout approach to scaling and that's a really critical thing to understand”
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Grokking Bitcoin
Recommended“then technical books about bitcoin i like grocking bitcoin which is a very computer science-heavy one”
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Inventing Bitcoin
Recommended“then there's like simpler intuition building books that aren't hardcore on the economics or the protocol design so you have like inventing bitcoin by john pritzker which is good”
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Bitcoin Clarity
Recommended“you have bitcoin clarity by qr bickers”
ChooseFI
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Raising Your Money-Savvy Family For Next Generation Financial Independence
Recommended“The last one I have here and this is because I literally went to Doug and Carol and pleaded with them to make this book for the fight Community was raising your money Savvy family and they released this book this past year and Brad it's on the shelf behind you as well for people it is a phenomenal book”
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Get Good with Money
Discussed“when you look at personal finance through the lens of financial wholeness that argument goes away and I think Tiffany knocked it out of the park with her book to get good with money”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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The Fifth Agreement
Discussed“I saw you post that this new one the fifth agreement which is really good too but I kind of already thought that way always been kind of skeptical”
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Golf is Not a Game of Perfect
Recommended“there's a book called golf is not a game of perfect no I get it applies to pool by the way it applies to everything when I got it uh this caddy gave it to me at this golf course”
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Chaos under Heaven
Recommended“the books available right now ladies and gentlemen uh it's called k and non-binary folks chaos under heaven josh rogan”
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Don't Shoot
Discussed“and then you know in in my research and my study when i i was reading this book it's called i think i think it's like don't shoot or something like that i can't remember exact title of it so i was reading this book and it was talking about the this program called ceasefire”
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Fast and Furious
Discussed“like katie pavlich had fox book called fast and furious when we're talking about gun control type thing”
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Enter the dragon
Recommended“and by the da of dundo if you read that book and I read that book cover to cover like 20 times he combined martial arts in a way he said absorb what's useful take what's useful and throw out everything else”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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Up Your Score: SAT
Discussed“called up your score the underground guy did the sat with with two friends and um you know that was uh uh that was kind of a fun little project and that that book was still selling a little bit”
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I'm ok - you're ok
Discussed“when we were younger the book i'm okay, you're okay came out right”
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With God in Russia
Recommended“and he describes it in this book called with god in russia in this kind of bold just straightforward way”
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The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
Recommended“i read this one book called the neuropsychology of anxiety which is a it's a great scientific work i think it's the greatest neuropsychological work of the last 50 years it's very hard book i think it has 1800 references something like that”
Behind the Bastards
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Surgery of Love
Discussed“they had co-authored a book called Surgery of Love. Joan. It was aimed at creating popular demand for his love surgery.”
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The Love Surgeon
Discussed“significant details about it exist, both thanks to the book The Love Surgeon and from a story in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, also written by Sarah Rodriguez”
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How to Get More Out of Sex
Critiqued“In 1974, in his best-selling book, How to Get More Out of Sex, psychiatrist David Rubin urged mothers to get vaginal tightening surgery, calling it a simple procedure that could make a woman of 40 almost the same sexually as a girl of 18.”
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Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, by the Staff of the Institute for Sex Research, Indiana University : Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Paul H. Gebhard,...
Discussed“5 years later, in 1953, he published Sexual Behavior of the Human Female. The books contained controversial information for the time as they detailed topics such as homosexuality, premarital sex, and even beastiality.”
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On the Jewish Question
Discussed“In 1844, Markx wrote an essay with the deeply unfortunate title on the Jewish question. He's not the only one using this phrase. Like that's why Hitler uses it, right? It is called that by a lot of people.”
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The Ladies Guide in Health and Disease
Discussed“A particularly dire case study would be one that Kellogg himself wrote out in his 1902 edition of Ladies Guide to Health and Disease, a book he absolutely should not have written.”
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The Uses of Water in Health and Disease
Discussed“A particularly dire case study would be one that Kellogg himself wrote out in his 1902 edition of Ladies Guide to Health and Disease, a book he absolutely should not have written.”
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Lectures on the Diseases of Women
Discussed“In 1868, when John Harvey was just 15, a gynecologist named Charles Rest wrote a book called Lectures on the Diseases of Women.”
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Kellogg's Six-hour Day
Discussed“According to Benjamin Klein Hunnicut in Kellogg's six hour day, famous for his energy and untiring work, John Harvey cultivated the image of a superman, dictating the secretaries for eight hours at a stretch”
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Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living
Discussed“I'm going to quote now from a book titled John Harvey Kellogg and the religion of biologic living by Brian Wilson. Dr. Brian Wilson. quote, "He would compensate for his physical shortcomings by energy, assertiveness, and a burning ambition to do something with his life.”
The Realignment
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Thinking Fast
Discussed“something i appreciated about your book julia is that you opened it by talking about this trend in the mid-2000s of just being like our minds are doomed like thinking fast and slow like they're you know like the human beings naturally irrational”
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Lords of Finance
Discussed“you know it's interesting i one of the things i appreciate about your book i'm reading another book right now called lords of finance which was very hot like 10 years ago”
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Ghost Fleet
Discussed“ghost fleet which was a book in 2015 by pw singer and august cole that we really enjoyed in this genre also features something similar with f35s also getting hacked”
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Parade's End
Discussed“i just recently finished parades and by ford maddox four which is sort of like a classic novel of the first world war”
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The Face of Battle
Discussed“and you know and i recently reread uh john kegan's the face of battle”
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Eleanor
Recommended“It is the new eleanor roosevelt biography by david michaelis oh i haven't read it i heard good things”
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Securing Democracy
Discussed“at the start of the book you talk about how you had a conversation with carl bernstein who is famous for obviously uncovering watergate with bob woodward and he told you specifically the snowden story that reporting was probably going to be the biggest story you covered in your career”
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Sick
Discussed“so right before the start of the obama presidency you wrote a book called sick the untold story of america's healthcare crisis and the people who pay the price”
Modern Wisdom
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Effortless
Discussed“well we're talking about a new book today effortless very very excited for this to come out”
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Soundtracks
Discussed“i just was talking to john um acuff who's just come out with a book called soundtracks and he's basically saying we have all these negative soundtracks in our mind that get in the way”
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Who Not How
Discussed“i had benjamin hardy on the what's essential podcast and he said he just wrote a book called who not how awesome episode i really enjoyed that”
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Hype
Discussed“one one of the things that you go through that i thought so interesting in the book is what billy's got up to since he went to jail”
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Kings of the wyld
Recommended“my last one before we do a quick round of what we've watched on netflix is kings of the wild that's w-y-l-d so i got introduced to this book by a buddy called jake who's big into fantasy it's a fiction book it's 350 400 pages long it'll take you maybe a few weeks if you read for 15 minutes”
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Until the End of Time
Recommended“we will be linking the brand new paperback version of until the end of time in the show notes below”
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X-Risk
Recommended“but this thomas moynin x-risk how humanity discovered its own extinction dude you've done a really really good job with this”
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Effortless attention
Discussed“um and uh I think that argument is made actually in this book effortless attention which is a book on of one of the textbooks on flow”
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The Spirit of Music
Discussed“that's the story the fictional story of the spirit of music and it started with the music lesson book it started there in the first book where you find that music says she's sick”
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The music lesson
Discussed“and it started with the music lesson book it started there in the first book where you find that music says she's sick”
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Insight
Discussed“i read a book called insight which is all about introspection and it finds that introspection can actually cloud people's judgment if you're not doing it properly one of the findings tasha urich she covers the way that you ask yourself questions plays a big role in how how much introspective clarity you can get”
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The farther reaches of human nature
Recommended“a couple books by maslow beyond just um you know the hierarchy of needs that everyone's familiar with uh you know the farther reaches of human nature just an incredible vision of what uh the human mind is capable of so uh i would highly recommend that or or towards the psychology of being by maslow”
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toward a Psychology of Being
Recommended“so uh i would highly recommend that or or towards the psychology of being by maslow”
Big Technology Podcast
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Fulfillment
Discussed“He wrote this book called fulfillment about life, uh, for basically not even life for workers in the Amazon fulfillment centers, but more just about the inequality that we have in the country and how it's, um, a system that's, uh, that's essentially like you can fight against, but you can't beat in some ways.”
The Dr. John Delony Show
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Danny, the Champion of the World
Discussed“so my number one favorite book of all time is this danny the champion of the world uh by raul dahl”
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The Biology of Desire
Recommended“it's called the biology of desire why addiction is not a disease it is wonderful”
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Sleep Donation
Recommended“karen russell sleep donation these are all fiction by the way this book was a trip um i loved it in fact i'd recommend this book to everybody that's a good book again”
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The Only Good Indians
Recommended“um steven graham jones the only good indians again this is a horror novel it's scary pants and real dark too but it was just a masterpiece”
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How Long 'til Black Future Month?
Recommended“and then i'm still working through nk jemisin she is the i think she's the best science fiction writer in the world um how long do black future month this is just a collection of short stories that man i wish my had this kind of imagination”
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The Whole30
Recommended“if you want to figure out what diet works for you i always recommend to everybody go get the whole 30 book and just start there it's an elimination diet it's very clean and it's easy”
This Week in Startups
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It's About Damn Time
Recommended“great book you can go get arlen's book and hear the whole history it's super compelling”
EconTalk
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A Beginner's Guide to America
Discussed“her latest book is a beginner's guide to america for the immigrant and the curious”
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The city of the yellow devil
Discussed“and she gave me a book by maxim gorky called the city of yellow devil and that was um you know the title that gorky had given to new york city”
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Poorly Understood
Discussed“he is the author of poorly understood what america gets wrong about poverty co-authored with lawrence eppert and heather bullock and that book is our topic for today”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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The Way of Integrity
Discussed“Martha, it's truly an honor uh and privilege to be with you today, and I'm so glad that we're getting to discuss uh your amazing new book, The Way of Integrity, Finding the Path to Your True Self.”
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Steering by Starlight
Discussed“And I wanted to start actually with a quote I saw from one of your other books recently, and it's from your book called Steering uh by Starlight.”
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The Tibetan book of living and dying
Discussed“so i was into the uh tibetan book of living and dying”
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The Upside of Stress: Why Stress is Good for You (and How to Get Good at it)
Discussed“i remember i was reading uh the upside of stress by kelly mcgonagall and she was talking about how actually when we're doing something meaningful we can take on more stress”
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Tell me how long the train's been gone
Recommended“i did just read for the you know recently james baldwin i've gotten into and tell me how long the train's been gone”
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The Moviegoer
Recommended“the moviegoer by walker percy because it's about like any great book including non-fiction it's about a person goes on a journey and we're all on a journey”
Conversations with Tyler
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The fourth eclogue of Virgil
Discussed“the second reason is that virgil also wrote a poem called the fourth eclog in which he speaks very mysteriously about a child that will be born who will start a golden age”
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Lavinia
Discussed“uh a.s byatt ursula le guin writes the tale of lavinia”
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The Civil War
Discussed“why does reading lukan's the civil war make more sense in 2021 than it might have 30 years ago”
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Metamorphoses
Discussed“how does that complete the picture but ovid had the metamorphoses”
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Heroides
Discussed“and also in heroic seven which is a poem shaped like a letter written by dido to anaes”
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Satiricon
Discussed“you've never read petronius as satiricon that's hilarious”
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The golden asse of Lucius Apuleius
Recommended“and ditto for um epileus's golden ass in which a guy gets turned into a donkey and goes wandering around um greater grease getting into all sorts of trouble”
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The Death of Virgil
Discussed“Now, Hermann Broch, as you know, he wrote the famous novel The Death of Virgil. He was a Catholic. Is that coincidence?”
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Paul Bunyan
Discussed“For Britten he did Paul Bunyan. Well, here's here's the thing you learn from Auden. His greatest libretto in terms of poetry is his first one called Paul Bunyan, which made an absolutely terrible opera –”
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The Bassarids
Discussed“So I think, you know, his his greatest libretti I think his best two are the two that he wrote for Hans Werner Henze, The Elegy for Young Lovers and The Bacchae, The Bassarids.”
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Earthly Powers
Discussed“I think that perhaps Earthly Powers was his great novel. Because he takes the form of a Somerset Maugham novel and he overlays a mafia novel, a religious novel, a buildingsroman all in that.”
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
Discussed“Willa Cather, who was not Catholic, wrote, you know, Death Comes for the Archbishop, maybe the best Catholic novel in American literature.”
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The flowers of evil
Discussed“I just finished writing a 14,000-word essay on Charles Baudelaire. That's going to be the introduction to a new edition of The Flowers of Evil.”
My First Million
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It's not about the bike: My journey back to life
Discussed“i don't know how you got all this but he's like you just need to read this one book it was the lance armstrong book um liv whatever his book was called”
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Made to stick
Recommended“and it was basically um i read the book made to stick and i just copied that so i took information about their company and i made it really easy to understand”
Monday Morning Podcast
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The Wisdom of Yoga
Recommended“i recommend exploring the wisdom of yoga by stephen cope s-t-e-p-h-e-n-c-o-p-e”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
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Failosophy
Discussed“and when i think about you know you've written this amazing book about called philosophy about failure i was thinking what is objectively like what is failure”
The Rubin Report
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Tropic of Cancer
Discussed“some time since the early 60s, we kicked free of all the dumbest restraints on free speech, government censorship, you could publish, you couldn't legally publish "Lady Chatterley's Lover" James Joyce's, "Ulysses", Henry Miller's, "Tropic of Cancer", Alan Ginsberg's, "Howl" before about 1960 without worrying about being dragged into court”
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Exit, voice, and loyalty
Discussed“there's a guy named Albert Hirschman, a political scientist. In the early 70s, wrote a book called "Exit Voice and Loyalty". And he said, there were basically three ways to register descent from the status quo.”
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Make Your Own Sunshine
Discussed“But I thought with this interview, I'm gonna do it a little more intentionally, because the book which I've been reading over the last couple of days, it's so light, and warm and decent, and it puts a smile on your face.”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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Life Undercover
Discussed“It's so clear from how you talk and the way you describe yourself that you are very attuned to the pain of others, whether it's the suffering of the Burmese people or the deep shock and pain you felt over 9/11, which you describe in your book.”
Timcast IRL
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The Jinx
Recommended“this was uh this is a great hbo show called the jinx which you have to watch”
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The Myth of White Fragility
Discussed“so uh you also have a book about white fragility was it the myth of white for julian i think”
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Nobody Knows How to Make a Pizza
Discussed“about two years ago i bought a signed copy of her book nobody knows how to make a pizza was quite amazed that she took time to write a note”
StarTalk Radio
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Heart, Breath, Mind
Discussed“so um you wrote a book uh heart breath mind it subtitled train your heart to conquer stress and achieve success”
The Rich Roll Podcast
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AFROSURF
Discussed“Well, you've got this book that just came out AFROSURF and I haven't gotten a chance to see the copy. I should have brought you a copy.”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Healing After Loss
Recommended“we read a page from this book that a friend sent us and you know each page there each date has a page and it has advice about healing after loss and i must say that the quality of the concepts and and so on are very good so i would recommend this anybody who's going to have a loss”
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Under Fire
Discussed“um and in the book there's a good great great segue there sort of natural because the the book that i read was under fire came out in i think 1991”
Founders
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Overdrive
Discussed“That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Overdrive, Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace”
Huberman Lab
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An Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology
Discussed“There's a book by um Randy Nelson and and Lance Kriegfield, ex- true experts in the field.”
Freakonomics Radio
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The Price We Pay
Discussed“and that is Marty McCary he is a surgeon at Johns Hopkins and the author of the price we pay what broke American Health Care and how to fix it”
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Birdwatcher
Discussed“in a book called an American sickness The Physician journalist Elizabeth Rosenthal describes the industrialization of U.S health care”
