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Books podcasts were talking about in November 2021
Throughout November 2021, podcasts engaged with a diverse array of literary topics ranging from evolutionary psychology and historical figures to sports media and wrestling lore. On the Huberman Lab podcast, Andrew Huberman hosted David M. Buss to discuss several of his notable publications in evolutionary psychology, including The Evolution of Desire, Why Women Have Sex, the textbook Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, and his recent release When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault. The Lex Fridman Podcast featured Robert Crews discussing the availability of extremist and historical texts in publishing. Crews contrasted the widespread publication of collected works by figures like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao with the initial taboo against publishing Osama Bin Laden in America, noting that Verso in the United Kingdom ultimately published Messages to the World as a pioneering compendium of Bin Laden's writings. In another episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast, Tom Brands mentioned a wrestling book while recalling a misquoted statement originally made by Dan Gable. On the Monday Morning Podcast, Bill Burr shared insights he recently gathered while reading a biographical book about sports commentator Howard Cosell titled Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports by Mark Ribowsky.
Lex Fridman Podcast
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A Wrestling Life 2
Discussed“I said something about that too in a book and i think i was misquoted one time um and actually it was gabo's quote i was trying to make the point that gable's quote was like this and you know they weren't making it like it was my own ones i think it was a first wrestling tough book but”
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My Struggle
Discussed“so you know we have my conf we have all this other stuff You can buy the collective works of lin and stalin mao whatever you want in whatever language you want But bin laden was taboo for american publishing”
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Messages to the World
Discussed“so it was only a verso in the uk that published a famous volume called messages to the world which was the first combining compendium of of banan's writings”
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The Birdman of Lauderdale
Discussed“There's this um great book by clay christensen called competing against luck it's like a terrible uh title but within it there's uh effectively an expression of this thing called jobs to be done theory”
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The Ron Paul Revolution
Discussed“and the second he told me i'm like i'm so in because i had read ron paul and the fed i read i you know kind of had understanding how the fed is unfair”
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End the Fed
Discussed“and the second he told me i'm like i'm so in because i had read ron paul and the fed i read i you know kind of had understanding how the fed is unfair”
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Termination Shock
Discussed“the following is a conversation with neil stephenson a legendary science fiction writer exploring ideas in mathematics science cryptography money linguistics philosophy and virtual reality from his early book snow crash to his new one called termination shock”
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Cryptonomicon
Discussed“you write both historical fiction like world war ii in kryptonomicon and science fiction looking both into the past and the future so let me ask does history repeat itself”
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The Gulag Archipelago
Discussed“i read a good chunk of the gulag archipelago when i was a teenager um because my my grandfather had it in his house because he was one of these americans who was obsessed with the soviet union and the soviet threat and and wanted people to to be aware of some of what what had happened”
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Man S Search For Meaning
Discussed“but it's also a story of of bravery of of love of brother brotherhood and sisterhood and basically survival you have like a man search for meaning which is the stories of uh the story of a man in a concentration camp basically finding beauty in life even under uh most extreme conditions”
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The Diamond Age
Discussed“yeah that that sounds like an easy thing but it's actually from an absolutely very difficult i mean this is the theme of a book i wrote called the diamond age which you know talks about a book that essentially does that and i've been sort of watching people try to come at the the problem of building that thing”
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Anathem
Discussed“the um i i did a lot of not a lot but i did some some reading of husserole when i was writing anathem um and he's a you know 20th century phenomenologist and he's writing in the he's writing at the same time as as scientists are starting to understand atoms and and becoming aware that that when we”
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Some Remarks
Discussed“then uh reem d um is one of those and termination shock um is is definitely one of those um so it just depends on on uh what people like”
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Selected Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
Discussed“and but it was like they would do the count of money christo you know moby dick you know robert louis stevenson robinson crusoe you know all the sort of classic books”
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The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes
Discussed“so i read a lot of that stuff uh for sure the annotated sherlock holmes um you you mentioned david deutsche as an inspiration for some of your work”
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The Language of God
Discussed“I wrote this book 16 years ago the language of god about science and faith trying to explain how from my perspective these are compatible these are in harmony they're complementary if you are careful about which kind of question you're asking”
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The Big Rig
Discussed“the following is a conversation with steve vaseli formerly a truck driver and now a sociologist at the university of pennsylvania who studies freight transportation his first book the big rig trucking in the decline of the american dream explains how long-haul trucking went from being one of the best blue collar jobs to one of the toughest”
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Panorama of Nations, Or, Journeys Among the Families of Men
Discussed“there's a really cool like um one thing i would recommend to to you and your listeners if you really want to see some like a remarkable page in sort of the history of labor and automation there's a a report that harry bridges who was um the socialist leader of the the longshoremen on the west coast and just”
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Memories and Machines: the Pattern of My Life
Discussed“there's a really cool like um one thing i would recommend to to you and your listeners if you really want to see some like a remarkable page in sort of the history of labor and automation there's a a report that harry bridges who was um the socialist leader of the the longshoremen on the west coast and just”
Huberman Lab
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The Evolution of Desire
Discussed“In addition to publishing dozens of landmark scientific studies, Doctor Buss has authored many important books, a few of those include, The Evolution of Desire,”
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Why Women Have Sex
Discussed“a few of those include, The Evolution of Desire, and Why Women Have Sex.”
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When Men Behave Badly
Discussed“And his most recent book is the one that I'm reading now, which is called, When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault.”
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Evolutionary Psychology
Discussed“And then even more broadly, I have a textbook called, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, which is in its sixth edition right now,”
Monday Morning Podcast
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Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports
Discussed“Just to give you that little tidbit of information, I learned that the other day reading an actual book about Howard Cosell. Why would I read about other things?”
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The Last Headbangers: NFL Football in the Rowdy, Reckless '70s: the Era that Created Modern Sports
Discussed“Lawhead gave me the book, uh, some of the last headbangers or something like that. It's basically about when you just played with concussions and that type of thing—the level of cheating that was going on.”
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Killing Pablo
Discussed“I see all the, you know, Killing Pablo. I read that book.”
The Daily Stoic
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The Moral Animal
Discussed“A big theme of that book is that the human mind is unreliable as a guide to reality. It's as if our mind acts like a lawyer, trying to make the case for our interests.”
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The E-Myth Revisited
Discussed“I read a few business books like 'The E-Myth Revisited' which talked about the power of building a system. This isn't just me making stuff up as I go along—systems design is actually a thing.”
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Law of Attraction
Discussed“This exercise was in a book called 'Attraction' by someone named Dino. I realized there were a lot of things in the bottom two quadrants—things I don’t like doing but am good at.”
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The Productivity Game
Discussed“Obviously, I know about it, but I'm sure listeners would be interested in knowing what you're working on and tell us how the process has been because, to me, that's the most interesting part. Yeah. Um, so the book currently does not have a title; the working title is 'The Productivity Game,' which I'm not a huge fan of.”
SmartLess
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The Day of the Djinn Warriors
Discussed“I noticed recently I was reading the tenth book in the uh in the gunter uh, what's his name series by Philip Kerr and I noticed your name on the back.”
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Prussian Blue
Discussed“You gave a little um, a blurb for the back of uh, for the jacket of Prussian blue which I'm almost finished with. Oh that's a great one, it's a great one, right?”