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Books podcasts were talking about in May 2021
May 2021 saw podcast hosts and guests spotlighting several prominent titles spanning physics, philosophy, behavioral strategy, and politics. On the Lex Fridman Podcast, the host recommended Frank Wilczek's Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality to his audience. People I (Mostly) Admire featured Steve Levitt recommending Bruce Friedrich and Matt Ball's The Animal Activist's Handbook, noting that its lessons on persuasion and activism offered surprisingly broad applicability. Timcast IRL featured Tim Pool encouraging listeners to purchase David Reaboi's book Qatar's Shadow War. On the Dwarkesh Podcast, Dwarkesh Patel recommended Michael Huemer's introduction to philosophy titled Knowledge, Reality, and Value for its clarity and accessibility, while guest Michael Huemer named David Z Albert's Time and Chance as a favorite for its fascinating exploration of physics and the universe. On ChooseFI, the host Brad discussed Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets, describing it as a life-changing read that related to decision-making under uncertainty. Additionally, Behind the Bastards featured Robert Evans promoting Dana El Kurd's Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine, also referenced alongside her contribution to The I.B. Tauris Handbook of Authoritarianism in the Arab World, as a way for listeners to support her work.
No Stupid Questions
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Choosing My Religion
Discussed“in Stephen's 1998 Memoir turbulent Souls which was later republished under a new title Choosing My Religion”
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Pinkalicious
Discussed“children's book author Victoria can included the line in her New York Times best-selling picture book Pinkalicious a story about a little girl who as the name of the book suggests loves the color pink when Pinkalicious asks for more pink cupcakes after already receiving seconds she's told by her mother that you get what you get and you don't”
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Charlotte's Web
Discussed“And if I think back to when I read 'Charlotte's Web' for the first time, I must have been quite young; who could forget Wilbur and Fern's relationship with Wilbur and then wanting Wilbur not to become bacon, which was in fact the whole plot of the book.”
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A Calendar of Wisdom
Discussed“You know, I've been thinking about this recently for two reasons: one is I've been reading this book by Tolstoy called 'A Calendar of Days,' and it's kind of like this daily devotional.”
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Some must watch while some must sleep
Discussed“because I read this book when I was a teenager that my sister had on her shelf I can picture it vividly it had a forest green cover with a Picasso painting of a woman sleeping it was called why some must sleep and others must watch”
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A sense of where you are
Recommended“my favorite essay or at least one of my favorite essays is called a sense of where you are John McPhee was writing about how Bill Bradley as a young basketball player at Princeton was amazing”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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A Beautiful Question
Discussed“let's put it that way in your uh book a beautiful question you ask does the world embody beautiful ideas”
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Fundamentals
Recommended“in your book fundamentals 10 keys to reality i'd really recommend people read it”
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Zero
Recommended“and that's when i i read the book zero a biography of a dangerous idea”
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The Double Helix
Discussed“i like just if you read james watson's book the double helix right about the the them you know cracking the the uh structure of dna”
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The dream life of Sukhanov
Recommended“she wrote this just phenomenal book called the dream life of sukhinov that i read this year maybe it was last year for the first time”
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The First Tycoon
Discussed“i think that um probably one of the most impactful ones that i can remember recently is around uh vanderbilt and so vanderbilt was these uh was this guy who basically without that much of an education he would invent or work with people to make these steamboats and then he had a lot of acumen around creating certain monopolies”
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Protagoras
Discussed“um so i think one of the things that had a very big impact on me were plato's dialogues and particularly protagoras and gorgeous as as as some of the two initial ones”
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Gorgias
Discussed“um so i think one of the things that had a very big impact on me were plato's dialogues and particularly protagoras and gorgeous as as as some of the two initial ones”
ChooseFI
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Zig Ziglar's little instruction book
Discussed“you know even reading like more like a Zig Ziglar book or something like that it was kind of like like what's the kind of spammy thing that you can say at the end of the conversation that will suddenly convert the sale versus not convert the sale”
Speaker 326 | Learn to Market Yourself and Your Skills in 2021 and Beyond 2021-05-29 Listen at 19:32 -
Thinking in Bets
Recommended“listen to her on others on other podcasts like Reader Books thinking abouts was just a life-changing book for me”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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The Animal Activist's Handbook
Recommended“Bruce friedrich's book is called the animal activist handbook maximizing our positive impact in today's world and I have to say I found the lessons in the book to be much more broadly applicable than the title would suggest”
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Drug Use for Grown-Ups
Discussed“In his new book, "Drug Use for Grown-Ups," he argues for a radical overhaul of drug policy.”
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Discussed“Because I read your first book, which is called "High Price," and you were the nerdiest lab rat that ever existed; I would have never imagined you emerging as an advocate.”
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Remember it!
Discussed“so I had been kind of discouraged from The Memory Palace but in preparation for this interview I was reading your book remember it and I said okay even though I failed on language I'm going to try it again”
Timcast IRL
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Qatar's Shadow War
Recommended“you can buy people's books you can buy books from people like dave or boy the uh cutters shadow war”
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Crucial Conversations
Recommended“our board chair who actually does professional conflict mediation um he suggested a book called uh crucial conversations and so defining uh what is dialogue how do we actually have conversations together where you're you can be communicating the same definitions of terms and you can hear each other”
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Outlaw platoon
Discussed“absolutely loved your podcast with jocko can't wait to read outlaw platoon”
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Boomers
Recommended“and there's a great book by my co-podca i have a podcast with american conservative magazine called right now my co-author mike michael helen andrews wrote a book called boomers it's a great book”
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The Motorcycle Diaries
Discussed“but the motorcycle diaries was a sick movie is that about him yeah it's actually good movie”
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America's Great Depression
Recommended“if he's watching i implore you to read murray rothbard's america's great depression central banks own”
Dwarkesh Podcast
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Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism
Discussed“so let me i've read dialogues and ethical uh vegetarianism which you also wrote and i want to question you on whether on that there has been moral progress”
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Knowledge, Reality, and Value
Recommended“he's also written eight books the newest one of which is this introduction to philosophy knowledge reality and value i highly highly recommend it it's incredibly clear and easy to read”
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Time and Chance
Recommended“so i like the book time and chance by david albert because it's just like fascinating right just fascinating stuff about um you know what physics teaches us about the nature of the universe and so on”
The Book Review
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America on Fire
Discussed“Elizabeth Hinton will be here to discuss her new book America on fire”
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Dispatches
Discussed“I just finished something this week Michael hair's dispatches which is a book from 1977 about the Vietnam war”
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The Emigrants
Discussed“I'm also reading a classic that probably I should have read a long time ago and I'm getting around to it's the immigrants by WG Sabal”
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Lenin
Discussed“I'm reading Victor Sebastian's Lenin the subtitle is the man the dictator and the master of Terror”
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Second Place
Discussed“Judith schvitz will be here to talk about second place and cusk's approach to fiction”
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The Yearling
Discussed“the book is called the life she wished to live and and the subtitle is a biography of marjerie Kenan Rawlings who of course wrote The Yearling”
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Cross Creek
Discussed“it's also the name of of her Memoir which was a big deal in it”
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Cross Creek Cookery
Discussed“she wrote a book called Cross Creek cookery”
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Dedicated
Discussed“it's called dedicated and it's by Pete Davis”
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The Free World
Discussed“he is the author of The metaphysical club and his newest book is called the Free World”
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An American Dream
Discussed“1965 he publishes a novel called an American Dream which the protagonist kills his wife and throws her out the window”
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The Lonely Crowd
Discussed“most famous of those is David reesman who publishes the lonely crowd in 1950 and that book is read as a critique of the conformist mentality”
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Cousin Bette
Discussed“Balzac a reporter said quote has the wind taken out of his sails by a scroll on the fly leaf of cousin Betty which reads I shall need to be fumigated after this”
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Beijing Payback
Discussed“I'll talk first about this other book I read called Beijing payback by Daniel N”
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Yoga
Discussed“which is called yoga where he reveals that not everything in the book is true and he tells you a certain things that that aren't true”
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The Committed
Recommended“I'm reading the committed by Viet tanw”
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Love Story
Discussed“Eric seagull's Love Story one one of the most extraordinary book and movie successes in recent years has been thrown out as a candidate”
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Jackpot
Discussed“I'm here on behalf of our colleague Jennifer salai she reviewed this week a book called Jackpot by Michael mechanic and the subtitle of the book is how the super rich really live and how their wealth harms us all”
Behind the Bastards
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Bibi
Discussed“I want to read one passage from Anchel Feifer's BB um which is about the um the 1973 Arab-Israeli war about a contingency mission that the sire matall were were marked out for”
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Polarized and Demobilized
Recommended“So, Dana, if people want to support you, uh, they can buy your book, Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine.”
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The I.B. Tauris Handbook of Authoritarianism in the Arab World
Recommended“So, Dana, if people want to support you, uh, they can buy your book, Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine.”
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Life Strategies
Critiqued“Now, this is a variation of one of Dr. Phil's life laws for people to follow, which he published in his plagiarized best-selling book Life Strategies. No. We teach people how to treat us.”
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Self Matters
Critiqued“Life Strategies, Self Matters, The Ultimate Weight Solution. God, I hate all of his titles.”
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The Ultimate Weight Solution
Critiqued“Life Strategies, Self Matters, The Ultimate Weight Solution. God, I hate all of his titles.”
Freakonomics Radio
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Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead
Book club“His book is called influence the psychology of persuasion We were discussing the new and Expanded Edition which has just been published”
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Persuasion
Discussed“This happened to me by the way when a previous book that I wrote called persuasion the first five thousand copies of the book were printed poorly”
This Week in Startups
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Unique ability
Discussed“and it's one of these things where um i came across this book called unique ability by strategic coach i don't know 15 20 years ago and you know their thesis was you know we grow up in a society where we go to school and we're constantly told to work on our weaknesses”
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The 4 Disciplines of Execution
Discussed“at fitbod we were heavily influenced by this book called 40x the four disciplines of execution and in that book they make a distinction between lag measures and lead measures”
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Venture Deals
Recommended“The first book I read was Venture Deals. Be smarter than your lawyer and venture capitalist. Uh can't recommend it enough. Uh you need to know the insides and outs of what's going on”
My First Million
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Dream Big
Recommended“And um there there's a book about him. It's called like greatness, I think. I I couldn't find I only saw it in Portuguese. Don't know if there's an English version. Yeah, it's called uh what is it? The Dream Big. It's on Amazon. Yeah, it's quite good. I read it maybe 4 or 5 years ago.”
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The Happy Body
Discussed“super joints is do you remember so we talked about the book happy body”
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Discussed“he goes because there's this phrase that i think andreessen horowitz uses which is or they made it more popular i guess i don't know if they invented it but ben horowitz has it in his book which is there's no silver bullet there's only lead bullets”
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THE ALLIANCE
Discussed“we there's this thing called uh that reed hoffman wrote his book called the alliance”
StarTalk Radio
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Books do Furnish a Life
Discussed“richard dawkins has a new book called books do furnish a life which we'll spend a lot of time talking about because it goes everywhere”
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Mars
Discussed“in 1992 he wrote a book called mars where the life forms there were more like they were sort of algae-like living on the surface of a cave”
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Chasing new horizons
Discussed“so you've got a recent book author of several books i remember your early book on venus uh that was fun uh aren't many books on venus and you put one out there on it so uh but more recently you've got a book titled chasing new horizons”
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The War of the Worlds
Discussed“but like the idea of martians you know that it's that's the plot of the war of the worlds right”
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
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2001, a Space Odyssey
Discussed“If you read the original treatment written by Arthur Clarke for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was written before the movie and then the book was written after the movie, he makes a really compelling point. He says that when civilizations achieve a sophisticated enough level of technology, there's no longer a need to physically transport yourself from”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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Life at the Bottom
Discussed“he's written many books some of which have had a rather profound cultural impact including life at the bottom the world view that makes the underclass 2001”
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Not with a Bang But a Whimper
Discussed“but a whimper”
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The Terror of Existence
Discussed“the politics and culture of decline 2008 spoiled rotten the toxic cult of sentimentality 2010 and the terror of existence with catholic theologian kenneth francis in 2018”
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Spoilt Rotten The Toxic Cult Of Sentimentality
Discussed“you've written provocative tracts like the toxic cult of sentimentality which is a real dagger”
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Troy
Discussed“and there's there's a third one in that trilogy that just escapes my mind troy”
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Flaubert's Parrot
Recommended“and and this is where the parrot comes from that julian barnes wrote about so brilliantly in flaubert's parrot”
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The Matter With Things
Discussed“um and he's working on a new book which i have and have started to read a long ways into it at the moment called the matter of things which will be forthcoming at some point in the future and will shape some of our discussion”
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Interdependence
Recommended“it's like i've read a very good book i keep mentioning it by a young microbiologist in america called kritishama called interdependence and she argues very importantly that it's not just that um certainly it's not just that an animal or an organism molds its environment”
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Pearl Harbor
Discussed“He's also written seven novels, including the New York Times bestseller Pearl Harbor, and has founded Hollywood for Habitat for Humanity.”
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Sources of the Self
Discussed“There's a philosopher in in Canada, Taylor, who wrote wrote about this in in a book called Sources of the Self, medieval people took the idea of hell extremely seriously and tortured themselves with it.”
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Living the Braveheart Life
Discussed“You write about that in in this book. Yes. Yes. Living the Braveheart Life. This is an autobiography or partly an autobiography.”
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More from Less
Recommended“this is a book very important book which i recommend to your readers by andrew mcafee uh and that is uh making uh more from less or more from less”
The Realignment
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The Upstarts
Discussed“so he's the senior executive editor for the global technology at bloomberg but he's also for our purposes author of amazon unbound another book called the upstarts about uber and airbnb and the everything store the original biography of jeff bezos and tail of that amazing company”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Mental Immunity
Discussed“I talked about this yesterday with this guy Andy Norman who wrote This Book mental immunity”
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Rush to Judgment
Discussed“yeah i read the which mark lane the rush to judgment that had me thinking absolutely jfk that it had to be a conspiracy”
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Into the Wild
Discussed“do you ever read the book into the wild yes by krakauer”
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Unwinding Anxiety
Recommended“he wrote this book called unwinding anxiety and he's like he's an amazing guy i love really smart”
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Through the Looking-Glass
Discussed“but all that is created by lily lily wrote a bunch of books on it like the center of the cyclone the deep self”
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Center of the Cyclone
Discussed“lily wrote a bunch of books on it like the center of the cyclone the deep self”
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The Deep Self
Discussed“lily wrote a bunch of books on it like the center of the cyclone the deep self”
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Underboss
Discussed“and the book was under boss which was the autobiography of this guy named sammy the bold gravana”
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UFOs Among the Stars
Discussed“according to the book UFOs Among the Stars by Timothy Green Beckley the security police saw us coming and just sort of moved back as we passed them and entered the structure”
Conversations with Tyler
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Hitler's Shadow Empire
Discussed“and his senior thesis that he wrote at harvard called hitler's shadow empire the nazis and the spanish civil war was later published by harvard university press”
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The Wages of Destruction
Discussed“because at one point as as adam twos wrote masterfully in wages of destruction you know you ended up having 20 to 25 of gdp going into armaments”
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The Sleepwalkers
Recommended“if you're interested in the nazi period i would um you know if you if you want to learn about the first world war for instance i would um i would recommend sleepwalkers or or neil's pity of war um you know great books teach you a lot”
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The Pity of War
Recommended“if you're interested in the nazi period i would um you know if you if you want to learn about the first world war for instance i would um i would recommend sleepwalkers or or neil's pity of war um you know great books teach you a lot”
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Democracy by Petition
Discussed“well you have to remember my published work in in um the the book with david moss suggests that you know capture the problem with capture is it's too sexy a term”
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Transformation
Discussed“well you have to remember my published work in in um the the book with david moss suggests that you know capture the problem with capture is it's too sexy a term”
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Preventing Regulatory Capture
Discussed“and there are some there's a great chapter in our book preventing regulatory capture by daniel schwartz who's shown that at least an insurance regulation in minnesota”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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A Radical Awakening
Recommended“i highly recommend a radical awakening to absolutely everyone we're gonna put the link in the comments”
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Believe IT
Recommended“and when you go out and get the book you'll you'll read about it 45 233.0 you're hearing about a journey of someone who was the underdog”
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It's All in Your Head
Recommended“and i hope everyone who's listening and watching uh go and grab a copy of russ's book it's all in your head”
Modern Wisdom
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Guantanamo Diary
Discussed“you release your book and then you eventually get out”
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The No-Nonsense Meditation Book
Recommended“also the no-nonsense meditation book a scientist's guide to the power of meditation by mr stephen laurie's md will be linked in the show notes below on amazon”
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The Art of Impossible
Recommended“the art of impossible dude you would you would love it i highly highly recommend you should really consider getting him on the show”
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MS-13
Recommended“ms-13 the making of america's most notorious gang will be linked in the show notes below as well”
The Rubin Report
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The Tyranny of Big Tech
Discussed“I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is the junior senator from the great State of Missouri, and the author of the new book, "The Tyranny of Big Tech" Senator Josh Hawley, welcome to the Rubin Report.”
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With All Due Respect
Recommended“We are not going to link to that political piece down below but we will link to Nikki's book, "With All Due Respect", which I've got right here and we'll do more of these in person.”
The Rich Roll Podcast
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The Hard Crowd
Recommended“This is the new Rachel Cushner collection, "The Hard Crowd", it's essays from 2000 to 2020. Rachel Cushner is one of my three favorite writers currently working”
The Daily Stoic
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Call Sign Chaos
Recommended“General Mattis, who's a big fan of Stoicism, talks about this in his book Call Sign Chaos, which is very good.”
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
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Hysterical!
Recommended“because i mean there's this documentary called hysterical about female comics”
The Tim Ferriss Show
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Radical Hope
Discussed“So, there's an amazing book called Radical Hope. It's not a self-help book, although it sounds like it is. It's a work of philosophy and anthropology, and it's about the life of Plenty Coup.”
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The Innocent Anthropologist
Discussed“and he literally gave me a book called the innocent anthropologist and it became very clear to me that the bank wasn't ready to pivot in that way”
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A Fine Balance
Recommended“and a fine balance by here's another one right mystery wrote in mystery there we go”
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Manifesto for a Moral Revolution
Recommended“of course i recommend people also read your books the blue sweater and also manifesto for moral revolution”
Pod Save America
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Persist
Discussed“and so i think of this and this is what i talk about in persist i try to make the case about how personal policy is”
EconTalk
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How to Change
Discussed“she is the james g dinan professor at the wharton school university of pennsylvania and the author of how to change the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be which is our topic for today katie welcome to econ talk”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
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Son of a Silverback
Discussed“you said i remained a boy while he was alive even when i was 18 and i needed to be a man to tell these stories”
Huberman Lab
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Discussed“It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the USA, because there are Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for many other countries as well. The title of the paper is "Voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system." That's the system that causes fight or flight AKA stress, and causes release of adrenaline. "And”
